Spain During World War II

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Author: Wayne H. Bowen

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Bowen bk p i-xii, 1-280

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Spain during World War II


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Spainduring World War II Wayne H. Bowen UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS COLUMBIA AND LONDON


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Copyright © 2006 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bowen, Wayne H., 1968– Spain during World War II/ Wayne H. Bowen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Examines how the Francisco Franco regime achieved its goals of state survival and internal order following the divisive Spanish Civil War. Bowen argues that even the most pro-Axis elements within Spain were more concerned with domestic politics, the potential for civil unrest, and poverty than with wartime events in Europe”—Provided by publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-8262-1658-8 (hard cover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8262-1658-7 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Spain—Politics and government—1939–1945. 2. Spain—Social life and customs—20th century. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Spain. I. Title. DP270.B684 2006 946.082'4—dc22 2006006540 A™ This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Kristie Lee Typesetter: Phoenix Type, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: New Baskerville, Fashion Compressed Publication of this book has been supported by a contribution from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and United States Universities.


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To my parents


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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6.

Foreign Policy, Civil War to World War

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Foreign Policy, World War to Cold War

40

Domestic Politics

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The Economy

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Chapter 7. Chapter 8.

Culture and Leisure

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Women and the Sección Femenina

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The Catholic Church

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The Authoritarian State and the Opposition

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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could not have completed this book without the indispensable aid of friends, colleagues, and professionals in the United States, Spain, and Iraq. Fellow historians Christian Leitz, Victoria Enders, Aurora Morcillo, Jack Greene, and Norm Goda read and provided valuable comments at key stages of the text’s development. My friends José Alvarez and Geoffrey Jensen read chapters and provided significant help during my three research trips to Spain. Guillermo Rocafort Pérez aided my understanding of recent historiography and was always ready to assist my investigations in Madrid. My research benefited from the guidance, direct assistance, and helpfulness of archivists and librarians in Madrid, especially at the Biblioteca Nacional, Hemeroteca Municipal, Biblioteca Central Militar, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, and Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco. Any faults remaining with this text remain mine, resistant to the efforts by these colleagues to serve as correctives. My research in Spain was possible because of the financial generosity of Ouachita Baptist University, which awarded me a faculty development grant (in 2002) and two research grants (2003 and 2005). A timely sabbatical from Ouachita during Spring 2003 allowed me to write the draft of this book. The Kingdom of Spain honored me with a Research Grant in 2005, through the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and United States Universities, matching funds from my own university at a critical time in this book’s development. I am grateful to the University of Missouri Press, for having enough faith in my research and writing to support this manuscript, my sophomore effort in Spanish history.

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Acknowledgments

I would also like to thank the history department at Ouachita Baptist University. Friends as well as comrades — Tom Auffenberg, Trey Berry, Mark Miller, Ray Granade, and others since departed—provided encouragement, advice, and friendship as I worked to finish this text before and after my deployment to the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004. My family in California, Arkansas, and elsewhere lifted me up through their prayers and messages during my time in Iraq, and in this regard I should especially thank my mother, Margaret Clark, and my father, Larry Bowen, for their support then and throughout my life. I owe my life to the soldiers who served with me in Iraq, who worked with me and with the Iraqis to improve infrastructure and build a new government. Of these, let me especially thank Allen Haight, Maggie Flavin, Stephanie Gerber, and Jerry Gardner, as well as Mark Phelan, whose unfortunate death at the hands of terrorists ended an honorable and admirable life. The Iraqi people will always have a special place in my heart, as I wish them security, democracy, and prosperity: conditions denied to them for too long by dictatorship and war. I would also be remiss if I did not thank the people of Spain, whose food delights me, history enthralls me, language attracts me, and whose lives during the Second World War form the core of this text. To live in Spain is to breathe its past, an exercise which will never tire me. I owe the greatest debt to my beautiful wife, Kendra, whose support has sustained me through years of research, writing, unexpected military deployment, and everything else life has sent my way. She is my unfailing partner, one true love, and the greatest blessing in a life filled with them. Our joy at the recent arrival of our son, Samuel, has added to our happiness beyond measure.


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Introduction

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he regime of General Francisco Franco, emerging out of the Spanish Civil War, ruled over a divided population during the years of the Second World War, 1939–1945. Even many of those elements who had supported Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War —monarchists, fascist Falangists, conservative Catholics, business owners, and military officers—remained dissatisfied with the government. Even more so, those who had sided with the Republicans—Socialists, Communists, anarchists, and liberals—were bitter opponents of Franco’s rule. The numerous memoirs, interviews, and documentaries that emerged after democracy returned to Spain in the late 1970s reflected this widespread disenchantment. Although some of the post–1939 discontent eventually diminished as a result of Spain’s booming economy of the 1960s, the bitter memories of the post–civil war period remained strong, especially among those who had suffered the harsh repression that characterized the first decade of the Franco regime. Beyond the repression, however, the government’s policies reflected widespread uncertainty. The Franco regime did not have a coherent vision for its future. As a coalition of mutually hostile elements—the military, the Catholic Church, and the fascist Falange chief among them—the government maintained a veneer of unity only through focusing on its enemies. While Spain was a personal dictatorship during the Second World War, at best Francisco Franco’s system was one of ambivalent authoritarianism. The leaders of Nationalist Spain did not know what they wanted, or had contradictory aims, or did not have the means to achieve their goals. As such, the state relied on improvisational governance, shaped by Franco’s pragmatism and the uncertain international and domestic climates. In this 1


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regard, Franco was distinct from the two most infamous dictatorships of the period; while Hitler and Stalin could be flexible, their flexibility was en route to a specific goal. Franco was pragmatic by nature, and his regime reflected this ambivalence. Beyond fighting the enemies of the regime, and muddling toward a vague authoritarianism, there was little coherence. At the center of the Franco regime was, of course, Francisco Franco himself. A career army officer, veteran of Spain’s wars in Morocco, he had little experience in governance when he took power in the early months of the Spanish Civil War. During the years of the Spanish Republic, Franco had been far less involved in politics than many other generals, although he made no secret of his conservative, Catholic, and anticommunist credentials. Franco held several positions of responsibility under rightist governments and embraced the military conspiracy of 1936 very late. With his focus on strictly military matters, he took over the Nationalist uprising in September and October 1936, and his narrow experiences in uniform did not prepare him well for rule over a diverse and difficult population during uncertain times. His failures during the Second World War emerged in many areas, but he did manage to survive the period with his rule intact: the primary imperative of any regime.1 Still, most Spaniards adapted to the regime with little violence or resistance. Whatever their personal preferences—workers’ state, fascist dictatorship, social democracy—almost all Spaniards preferred to accept the tranquility and stability of Franco rather than plunge into another civil war. In many ways, Spain was a country of two nations—those who supported Franco’s version of Catholic and authoritarian nationalism, and those who identified with alternatives: ethnic separatism, socialism, anarchism, communism, liberal democracy, or combinations thereof. Additionally, despite the emphasis on international events in much of the historiography of this period, the Second World War and the often dramatic developments in Spanish foreign policy had surprisingly little impact on the daily lives of Spaniards. While Spain’s potential entry into the war would have had a cataclysmic effect on living standards and conditions, the shifting neutrality and nonbelligerency of the Franco regime in the end had little relevance to most Spaniards during the Second World War. Only trade, especially food and fuel imports from the Allies, had an occasional direct impact on average Spanish families. There has been a significant amount of historical writing about Spain during the Second World War. Even before the end of the Spanish Civil 1. Geoffrey Jensen, Franco: Soldier, Commander, Dictator, 61–62, 69–70.


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War, diplomats and historians began to speculate on the course of Spain’s foreign policy during the impending European conflict. Would Spain enter the war? If it did so, under what terms would it enter the battlefield? Was Franco eager for war or hesitant, hoping to enter at the last moment? This debate has continued, with hundreds of books written since the end of World War II, both in Spain and the English-speaking world, focused on the personality of Franco, the conduct of Spanish diplomacy, and the activities of the División Azul (Blue Division), a unit of volunteers sent by Spain to fight against the Soviet Union. From contemporary accounts to more recent scholarship, historians have given Spain’s foreign policy significant focus. Among the three most significant historians working on the Franco regime, only one is Spanish: Javier Tusell, whose Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial remains the standard work on the period. Comprehensive, balanced, and derived from an exhaustive use of archival and secondary materials, Tusell’s book is an indispensable survey of the complicated Spanish diplomatic arena. The most important English historian is Paul Preston. His two main books discussing Spain’s international position, as well as the key decision-makers in this process, are The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in Twentieth Century Spain and Franco. Also useful is Sebastian Balfour and Paul Preston, editors, Spain and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Century. Preston is an excellent writer and exhaustive researcher, but he makes little effort to hide his revulsion of the Franco regime, a position that detracts from the objectivity of his many contributions to the field. Stanley Payne remains the dean of English-speaking historians studying twentieth-century Spain. His tremendous body of work, most notably Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977 and The Franco Regime, 1936–1975, remain the most comprehensive and balanced examinations of the Franco dictatorship. Until recently, the best book on the Spanish División Azul remained Gerald Kleinfeld and Lewis Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia. While reliant on German and Spanish archives, as well as use of interviews, it also exhibits a vibrant writing style and avoids the temptation, so common in modern writing about Spain, to condemn the Franco dictatorship and its supporters as completely identified with Nazi Germany. A newer Spanish-language manuscript, La División Azul, by Xavier Moreno Juliá, incorporates more extensive research and interviews, as well as the massive historiography on the unit that has emerged since the publication of Hitler’s Spanish Legion. Three other historians are essential reading on Spain’s international position, especially in relation to Nazi Germany. Christian Leitz, in Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945, conveys the


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extent of economic collaboration between Spain and the Third Reich, but also emphasizes the frustrations at both ends of the relationship. Rafael García Pérez arrives at the same conclusion in Franquismo y Tercer Reich. The best study of Spain’s Axis temptation is Norman J. W. Goda, Tomorrow the World: Hitler, Northwest Africa, and the Path to America, which also analyzes Franco’s policies in the context of World War II in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and the broader German strategy to prepare for a future global war against the United States. One positive development in Spanish historiography has been the increase in thematic studies, focusing on subject areas such as the Catholic Church, the economy, women, and the opposition. The best book on Spanish Catholicism is a recent one: William Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998. Although not devoted exclusively to the church under Francoism, it is the definitive work on this institution. Similarly comprehensive in chronology is Gabriel Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. On daily life, the most useful work is Jordi Gracia García and Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco (1939–1975): Cultura y Vida Cotidiana. The best general survey of the Sección Femenina (Women’s Section) of the Falange and the regime’s social policy is Kathleen Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism. Recent debate in Spain has returned to the issue of the Spanish Civil War, and the political murders by the regime and its opponents during the conflict. There has also been significant debate about the political origins of the regime during the Spanish Civil War. Along with the previously mentioned works by Payne and Preston, several have made major contributions to our understanding of the Nationalist state’s structure and ideological underpinnings. Still the most thorough examination of the structure and initial ideology of the Falange during World War II is Ricardo Chueca, El Fascismo en los Comienzos del Régimen de Franco, which discusses every constituent element of the party, as well as key personnel and functions during early Francoism. His study is an indispensable guide for additional research, and provides statistics not readily available elsewhere on press circulation, budgets, membership, and political appointees. A more recent work is La Falange de Franco: El Proyecto Fascista del Régimen, by Joan Maria Thomàs, which takes advantage of more recent historiography as well as newly available archival material. His discussion of the bitter divisions between the Falange and army, as well as tensions between radical and authoritarian wings of the party, is very useful for understanding Spanish fascism during World War II.


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In most of these works, the authors compare and contrast the Spanish dictatorship to other fascist, nationalist, and authoritarian regimes of the 1930s and 1940s. The Franco regime has received considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly as a state created with significant outside assistance from the fascist powers: Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Was Spain a fascist regime? To what extent was it imitative of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy? Was the Falange a totalitarian and fascist party, or a loose coalition of conservative and right-wing forces? After almost seventy years of debate, beginning with the Nationalist uprising in July 1936, most historians have coalesced around an understanding of this question. Spain during World War II was not a fascist state, but instead an authoritarian, nationalist, and Catholic dictatorship under the personal command of its dictator, Generalísimo Francisco Franco. However, the only legal political party in Spain, the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las J.O.N.S., was a fascist party, inspired by the example of its murdered founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The Falange was only one element of the regime, and competed for influence against shifting coalitions of monarchists, military officers, Catholic conservatives, and other groups. Even at the height of World War II, when the Nazi-led New Order seemed on the verge of winning the war, Spain was at most semi-fascist, within “a right-wing, praetorian, Catholic, and semi-pluralist structure.”2 In this context, Spain’s form of government during World War II compares most closely to those of Hungary and Romania, dictatorships whose fascist parties remained subordinated to military and state authority, or Portugal, where the personal rule of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar limited politics to efforts to gain the favor of the dictator. Despite its superficial resemblance to the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, Spain during World War II was “a conservative, military dictatorship rather than a fascist state.”3 Historians have also debated the chronology of the regime: which divisions of time most accurately characterize the changing nature of the state? In some areas, particularly in looking at the economy, it might make more sense to study the twenty years, ending in 1959, as a coherent period of consistent autarky and stagnant development. The history of the Catholic Church, even more, shows significant continuity throughout the first few decades of the regime. However, Franco’s Spain developed during the height of the New Order in Europe, 1939–1945. It was during this period 2. Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, 266. 3. Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future, 44.


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that the Nationalist government established the basic structure of the regime, a system which survived more or less intact until 1975: a personal dictatorship, a single party with totalitarian aspirations, an alliance between the Catholic Church and Spanish army, repression of labor and ethnic minorities, restrictions on women, and the elevation of the state as the driving force in economic decisions. Therefore, it makes sense to study the key formative years of this regime, during the Second World War. For all of this important work, however, there has yet to be one volume that encapsulates all of these themes, putting in the hands of historians a common frame of reference for the whole of Spanish society during this period. It is this gap which this work attempts to fill. This book attempts to synthesize decades of research on Spain into a text primarily focused toward the general reader, although specialists may also find it useful. Of course, no single volume could cover all aspects of Spanish history or the Franco regime during this period, and the way remains open for additional work. The potential sources for this study were many, and included recent historiography, recently declassified government documents, and periodicals published in Spain during World War II. In the latter category, this work uses newspapers and magazines issued through the system of censorship established by the Franco regime. There were some major differences between some of these mastheads. Arriba, for example, was the official daily newspaper of the Falangist Party, and embraced the New Order and fascism with significant enthusiasm. Marca was a newspaper devoted to sport, while Primer Plano focused on cinema and other entertainment. Pueblo was the newspaper of the Falangist Sindicatos (government-controlled unions) and devoted more of its coverage to labor and economic conditions. Informaciones, the publication of the Naziphile Víctor de la Serna, took a decidedly pro-Nazi editorial position, while YA (conservative) and ABC (monarchist) supported more Catholic and moderate policies. All came under the publishing guidelines of the regime, however, and had to comply with central directives on editorial positions, news coverage, and the exclusion of dissident voices from the press. The Franco regime viewed newspaper publication as “an activity in service to the state,” with journalists carrying out the mission of working for a “national institution,” albeit one in mostly private hands.4 While the Second World War in Europe began on September 1, 1939, 4. Justin Sinova, La Censure de Prensa Durante el Franquismo, 17, 39; Stanley Payne, The Franco Regime, 1936–1975, 337; Michael Richards, A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945, 10, 77.


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and ended almost six years later on May 8, 1945, this work takes a slightly longer view, beginning with the Nationalist Victory on April 1, 1939, and ending with the exclusion of Spain from the United Nations in the summer of 1945. While war in Asia began as early as 1931 and lasted for several months after the end of hostilities in Europe and Africa, it was the European arena where Spain acted, collaborated in the New Order, and conducted most of its trade and cultural activities. Rather than a sequential approach to Spain’s history during this period, each thematic chapter is internally chronological. The order of the chapters follows organizational priorities, rather than any established ideological or arbitrary selection: the sequence does not imply that foreign policy is more important than the Catholic Church, or that the opposition is less worthy of study than the economy. The text begins with three chapters, on foreign policy, internal politics, and economics, which set the stage and constraints on the Spanish government and its population: worldwide conflict and domestic penury. These three chapters describe a Spain created out of a civil war and period of international struggle but also shaped in large measure by the decisions of Francisco Franco. While still in a war against the Popular Front, he decided to embrace autarky, identification with the Axis, a tightly regulated economy, and restricted internal politics. The second group of chapters, on leisure, women, and the Catholic Church, examine the range of possibilities for the exercise of nonpolitical public activity by the Spanish people. Constrained by the authoritarian state, which censored the media, restricted women’s freedoms, and expanded the role of Catholicism in society, Spanish life during World War II nonetheless provided some opportunities for personal autonomy, entertainment, and genuine spiritual life. Even in the official institutions of the regime, including the church, there remained the possibility for apolitical or even mildly oppositional activity, despite the efforts of the Franco regime to control these dimensions. The final chapter examines the system of repression established by the regime, as well as the opposition movements that hoped for the overthrow of Franco. Chapters 1 and 2, “Foreign Policy, Civil War to World War” and “World War to Cold War,” reveal the general course of Spanish diplomacy during the European conflict, charting the transformation of Spain from Axis supporter to collaborator with the Allies. More recent scholarship argues that Spain’s neutrality was the product not of clever maneuvering by dictator Francisco Franco, but of mistakes and insensitive negotiations by Nazi Germany. While German aid to the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War predisposed Spanish military officers, fascist Falangists, and others to


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be enthusiastic supporters of the Axis, Spanish practical realities, effective Allied diplomacy, and blunders by Nazi leaders discouraged this from coming to fruition. By 1943, initial pro-Axis sentiments had faded within the Spanish regime and Franco’s government began to embrace the Allies, but so slowly that even after 1945 most Western diplomats remained convinced that the Spanish state would have preferred an alternative ending to the conflict. Chapter 3, “Domestic Politics,” discusses the internal conflicts within the most important groups in the Franco regime. While Spain was an authoritarian state, it did allow limited debate among the most important pressure groups and political families who had supported the Nationalist uprisings: Falangists, military officers, Bourbon and Carlist monarchists, and conservative Catholics. Spanish politics during the Second World War consisted of contests among these families for influence with Franco. The Nationalist coalition that had won the civil war lumbered from one internal crisis to the next, under a system of the victorious, and deliberately excluding any opening to the defeated—Socialists, Communists, Republicans, Basques, Catalans, or other political forces. While Franco remained the arbiter of the system, his rule depended on the divisions between and within the political families, a condition which made his government seem alternatively omnipotent or frighteningly fragile. Chapter 4, “The Economy,” tells the tragic story of Spanish poverty in the Second World War, arguing that this condition was at least as much the result of poor economic decisions as of the devastation caused during the Spanish Civil War. After almost three years of civil war and nearly a decade of depression, the Spanish economy in April 1939 was in serious trouble. Starvation, weak manufacturing, a refugee crisis, and bad weather were made worse by the economic policies adopted by the Franco regime: autarky, import substitution, wage and price controls, and rigid regulations. Inspired by the economic approaches of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Franco’s plans in this area were dismal failures, and compounded the already weak fiscal condition of Spain. Hunger, unemployment, and internal and external trade barriers hindered reconstruction and economic development to such a high degree that it was not until the late 1950s that Spain recovered the living standards and productivity of the already depressed 1936 levels. Chapter 5, “Culture and Leisure,” studies the free-time activities of Spaniards during the Second World War, from football to cinema to the theater. Despite, or even because of, the desperate economy and uncertain international conditions, Spaniards welcomed opportunities to divert


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themselves in sports and culture. Although the government attempted to channel these activities in a manner supportive of the regime, the Spanish population did not always comply. For example, foreign films, especially from the United States and United Kingdom, earned far better attendance than did more ideologically oriented productions from Spanish, German, and Italian studios. Over time, even the regime withdrew support from movies and plays with explicitly fascist or authoritarian messages, as these products failed to find audiences. Spanish spectators simply preferred comedy, light musicals, and other lighter fare, voting with their pesetas. In sports as well the government did not succeed in using athletics to promote a militarized youth and nationalism, but instead saw a resurgence of regional team loyalties and local heroes. Chapter 6, “Women and the Sección Femenina,” recounts the history of Spanish women during the Second World War, focusing on the Women’s Section of the Falange and its long-serving leader, Pilar Primo de Rivera. Spanish women emerged from the civil war with many of their political and economic rights curtailed by the Franco regime. The New State argued that unmarried women should not have professional careers in competition with men, and that married women should not work at all. Despite these political guidelines, within the female section of the Falange many girls and young women did find a measure of autonomy, and within the state and party were able to advocate for women’s education, athletics, and even professional development, despite the opposition of more conservative Catholic opinion. Chapter 7, “The Catholic Church,” profiles the institutions of the official state religion in Francoist Spain. Faced with the destruction of many of its institutions, as well as massacres of priests and members of religious orders by Republicans during the civil war, the Roman Catholic Church faced daunting prospects once the conflict ended. In addition to thousands of priests killed, the majority of churches and religious institutions in the Republican zone had been destroyed or heavily damaged. Even more significantly, under severe persecution the church had ceased to function in large areas of the country, leaving Spain in 1939 with thousands of neighborhoods, towns, and even cities with no priests, functioning congregations, or religious services. The church during World War II was, therefore, in a constant state of reconstruction and attempted revival. Despite its favored position in the regime, direct aid from the state, voluntary donations from the faithful, and Herculean efforts by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, even in 1945 Spain remained far less Catholic than its public image presented. The church never completely recovered from the devastation.


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Chapter 8, “The Authoritarian State and the Opposition,” examines the methods of repression practiced by the regime, as well as the means of resistance chosen by the groups in opposition, both within Spain and in exile. While the Nationalists won a military victory in the civil war, it was a much greater challenge to win the peace and gain the support of the population, especially those who had identified with the Republic and the Popular Front. Rather than choose a path of reconciliation, the victorious Francoists instituted a system of severe repression, from mass executions to forced labor battalions. Many Spaniards had supported the Nationalists in the civil war and remained identified with the regime after its victory in 1939. Just as many, however, had rallied to the Spanish Republic in 1936 and did not completely reconcile to Francoism even long after the guns stopped firing. For these citizens, World War II in Spain was an intensely unpleasant experience. They faced persecution, forced unemployment, imprisonment, or even execution for their political beliefs and practices. To cope with the large-scale opposition, the Franco regime fielded extensive security elements, including espionage agencies, local and national police forces, and the military. Combined with the desire of even bitter opponents to move beyond the conflicts of the civil war, the state succeeded in maintaining domestic peace. Outside of Spain, exile groups remained active and scored successes in the international arena, but these organizations were never able to stimulate significant internal dissent, and politics remained in the hands of the Nationalists. The Second World War was a traumatic time in Spanish history. As this conflict raged on the land, sea, and air surrounding Spain, however, a surprising calm remained on the Iberian peninsula. Far from the calm of a contented people, however, this was the quiet of an exhausted, hungry, and conquered population, weary of politics and warfare. To arrive at this tired state, however, and the relative peace that accompanied it, Spaniards had to endure a devastating civil war, a stormy nightmare which lasted almost three years. The events of that conflict played a major role in shaping the regime of Francisco Franco and help explain why Spain experienced the Second World War in the manner that it did. The Spanish government during the Second World War was the product of a terrible civil war, fought between July 18, 1936, and April 1, 1939. This conflict, in turn, had developed out of the tensions between the Left and Right during the Second Republic, a government that ruled Spain from April 1931 to the beginning of the civil war, and much of the nation until the Republican defeat of 1939.


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In 1930, the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and other generals collapsed in scandal and economic difficulties, taking with it the monarchy in 1931. The new state, the second republic to rule Spain, came to power in April after a round of elections gave a victory to the forces of republicanism, liberalism, and socialism, even though monarchist parties had carried more territory and much of rural Spain. Hailed as “the most total, rapid, clean, and peaceful revolution in history,” most of the population received the new government with open arms, some even referring to it as a “beautiful daughter.”5 When the Second Republic was declared in April 1931, a new utopian spirit entered Spanish political circles, at least those of the Center and Left. While the government the new republic replaced, that of General Primo de Rivera and his successors, had been widely seen by the working classes and literati as corrupt and self-serving, the men who constituted the leadership of the new state presented themselves as untainted by the previous regime and ready to create completely new structures and policies. While some of these radical policies, especially in land reform, new labor laws, and restrictions on clerical activity, proved very difficult to undertake, in foreign affairs the Second Republic managed to achieve more significant results, although these, too, proved short-lived. The Republic came into existence at an unpropitious period in European history. At the same time as many countries on the continent had abandoned democracy for dictatorship, Spain was moving in the opposite direction. Of the European states that were parliamentary states in 1919, nearly all had become military or monarchical dictatorships by the early 1930s, with most of the others to follow by 1936, the last full year of the Spanish Republic. Especially in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, democracy lost ground rapidly during the interwar period: Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Germany, and the Baltic States, among others, abandoned democratic systems for dictatorships. Three general elections—in 1931, 1933, and 1936—saw dramatic swings in Spanish government. While a nonrevolutionary republican regime governed from 1931 to 1933, liberal parties lost support as a result of their modest efforts to reform agriculture, education, and church-state relations and to create a new constitutional order. Conservatives won the 1933 elections, a victory that led to an aborted Marxist and anarchist revolution in 1934 as well as the creation of the Popular Front, an electoral coalition of Socialists, Communists, and leftist Republicans. The last free elections 5. Salvador de Madariaga, Memorias (1921–1936), 245.


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of the Second Republic took place on February 16, 1936, and revealed a country split almost down the middle. The Popular Front and its allies won 34.3 percent of the vote, while the Right and center Right won 33.2 percent. However, because of more effective coalition building by the Popular Front, the results in parliamentary seats did not reflect the closeness of this divide. Some rightist candidates ran against each other, while the Socialists, Communists, left Republicans, and Anarchists who made up the Popular Front made every effort to cooperate and apportion candidacies so as not to fight for the same share of votes. As a result, the Left and its allies gained approximately two-thirds of the seats in the Cortes. The vote counts also reflected significant ambiguity by the Spanish electorate. As the diplomat and historian Salvador Madariaga noted, Spain voted “2:1 against Marxism, 2:1 against clerical militarism, 8:1 against a socialist uprising, and almost unanimously against a military uprising.”6 Conservatives believed the election had been stolen by the Left, and street fighting, assassinations, and other political violence began to accelerate in the early months of 1936. Military officers such as General Francisco Franco, devout Catholics, conservative business leaders, and even Spain’s tiny fascist party, the Falange, began plotting the overthrow of the Republic. Even on the Left, many Socialist, Communist, and anarchist leaders expressed their desire to overthrow Spain’s democracy for a more revolutionary regime. As some pro-Republican intellectuals argued, the Popular Front was also to blame for the collapse of Spain’s democracy, having become force that was “chaotic, messianic, and slow to reform but ready to revolt.”7 After a final bout of assassinations, including the killing of a conservative parliamentary deputy in mid-July, the Spanish Civil War began with a right-wing military rebellion in Morocco on July 17–18, 1936. While the Republicans, forces loyal to the government and the Popular Front, initially held the lion’s share of Spain’s population, territory, and industrial capacity, the military rebels, or Nationalists, had nearly all the experienced army officers on their side, as well as the well-equipped colonial forces from Spanish Morocco and other territories. The air force and navy split, but most of these units remained loyal to the Republic, with pro-Franco officers killed or imprisoned. The Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco beginning October 1, 1936, could also count on early and more consistent military assistance from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, 6. James Anderson, The Spanish Civil War, 35; Madariaga, Memorias (1921–1936), 553–54; Payne, The Franco Regime, 44–45. 7. Madariaga, Memorias (1921–1936), 552.


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Introduction

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and the Portuguese dictatorship, at least in comparison with the less reliable Soviet aid provided to the Republic. As the internationally recognized government of Spain, the Popular Front government appealed to the Great Powers to sell it weapons and ammunition. Initially France, also under a Popular Front government, although a more moderate one than the Spanish version, agreed to sell aircraft and weapons to the Republicans. The conservative British government soon warned Paris that this aid could undermine the Anglo-French alliance, as it could lead to a wider war. Under British pressure, therefore, the French backed away from this initial commitment, limiting their assistance to permitting foreign volunteers, who would later become known as the International Brigades, to travel to Spain through France’s territory. Fearing a broadening of the conflict, the French and British proposed that a multinational neutrality pact, including an arms embargo on the Spanish Republic and the rebels, would be the best hope for containing the struggle. This proposal became the Non-Intervention Agreement, adopted in late August 1936 by the six relevant powers (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Portugal), and subsequently signed by nearly every state with an arms industry, except the United States, which nevertheless promised to abide by its terms.8 Unable to buy arms from the British or the French, and seeing German and Italian assistance flowing to the Nationalists, by late July 1936 the Republic turned to the Soviet Union, which was willing to sell weapons so long as this assistance was paid for in hard currency and at inflated prices. Also sent were military and political advisers, whose goals were to increase Soviet dominance of Spanish politics through the Spanish Communist Party, which consequently grew dramatically in its influence. Moscow encouraged its followers to support the Popular Front and moderation in the civil war as a way to gain legitimacy and access to power, but the Communists’ ultimate goal was to seize power for their party and establish a Soviet-style dictatorship.9 Rebuffed in its efforts to gain practical aid from other states, the Republic pleaded throughout the civil war for diplomatic and moral support from the League of Nations. Over the next two years, Spanish diplomats

8. Anderson, Spanish Civil War, 83–86; Charles Halstead, “Spanish Foreign Policy, 1936– 1978,” in Spain in the Twentieth Century World: Essays on Spanish Diplomacy, 1898–1978, 54–55, 57; Wayne H. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order, 24–25. 9. Ronald Radosh, Mary Habeck, and Grigory Sevastianov, Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, xvii, 6–7, 21–27.


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succeeded in placing the Spanish Civil War on the league’s agenda, but were never able to convince the organization to take united and forceful action. Fearing that any international intervention could not help but widen the war, the remaining league states were willing to offer little but proposals for mediation of the conflict, an unhelpful suggestion given the deadly warfare being fought on Spanish soil. Spain did ask for league supervision of the evacuation of international volunteers in 1938, a request followed by the organization, but this was primarily an effort on behalf of the Spanish government to snub the Non-Intervention Committee. The Spanish Republic’s only real hope was that a general war would end the unwillingness of the democracies to aid the Popular Front, although this proved a misplaced dream, as the Spanish Civil War ended five months before German tanks invaded Poland in September 1939.10 While Republicans had to rely on unreliable weapons shipments from the Soviet Union, which also insisted that this assistance had to remain controlled by the Spanish Communist Party, Franco’s Nationalists benefited from earlier and more consistent support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which was one of the keys to the defeat of the Republic. As early as a few weeks after the uprising, Germany and Italy provided the aircraft to enable the first major airlift in history, ferrying the troops of the Spanish Foreign Legion and other units to Spain from Morocco. Over the course of the war, Italy sent the most numerous forces to assist Franco, sending Fascist militia and regular army units into battle and sinking Soviet and neutral shipping with its submarines. German aid was more decisive, with the Condor Legion, a unit of air crews, communications experts, and trainers, providing indispensable help to the Nationalist struggle. Foreign support also came from Portugal, which provided basing areas, essential logistics support, and some volunteers for the uprising. While the Nationalists were never as successful as the Republicans in mobilizing foreign volunteers, they did recruit small numbers of Irish, English, and even Russian exiles to fight against the Popular Front.11 By early 1938 the end of the war seemed only a matter of time, with Nationalist victories accumulating on the battlefields of Spain. The war ended officially on April 1, 1939, with Franco’s forces chasing the final Republi-

10. Claude Bowers, My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War II, 389–90, 399–400; Halstead, “Spanish Foreign Policy, 1936–1978,” 57–59. 11. Anderson, The Spanish Civil War, 86–89; Judith Keene, Fighting for Franco: International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39, 2, 7; Paul Robinson, The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920–1941, 224–25.


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Introduction

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can forces into exile in France. The Nationalist victory came as a result of a number of factors: more consistent military and diplomatic support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, political and military unity within the Nationalist camp, British insistence on preserving the fiction of the NonIntervention Agreement, and superior battlefield command by Franco and his fellow rebel officers. The legacy of the Spanish Civil War on Spain in 1939 was entirely negative: substantial physical destruction, more than 250,000 violent deaths, more than 200,000 exiles, a corrupt and inefficient political system, and a mutual bitterness between the two formerly belligerent camps that endured for years. A few short months after the end of the civil war, a broader conflict, the Second World War, truncated any hope in Spain that it might be able to experience a season of peace and the benefits of tranquil trade with its neighbors. Even as Nazi Germany was invading Poland and the Western Allies declaring war on Hitler’s regime, the long hard road of reconstruction was beginning in Spain, unaccompanied by what could have been a serious attempt at reconciliation.12 An editorial cartoon from the end of World War II illustrated the challenges confronting Spain and the Spanish government in the aftermath of the civil war. Titled “The Obstacles of Juan Spaniard,” it showed an ordinary Spanish laborer jumping over three hurdles: “Civil War, Interior Reconstruction and World War.” An observing businessman noted, “Still ahead of you remains the hurdle of the postwar,” to which Juan replied: “But at least it will find me very well trained!”13 Faced with the difficulties of daily life in Spain during the Second World War, the average Spaniard did have to make every effort just to survive and overcome these hurdles, a struggle which is the focus of this book.

12. Payne, The Franco Regime, 219–20. 13. Arriba, February 9, 1945.


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Chapter 1 Foreign Policy, Civil War to World War

S

pain at the end of its civil war was a weak country, but its regime had great ambitions. Despite the dismal economy and exhausted population “hungry and weary of strife” and wanting “to eat and be left alone,” Francisco Franco and his close advisers believed that the approaching war, seen as inevitable by the spring of 1939, might bring great opportunities for Spanish imperial expansion, military glory, and economic aggrandizement. The central question of Spanish foreign policy during the Second World War was: would Spain enter the war on the side of the Axis, and if so, under what circumstances? Although the majority of the population did not want another war, the “pronounced apathy” of Spaniards toward political questions, as well as the centralized nature of the regime, meant that this issue was exclusively in the hands of Franco.1 With great divisions between pro-war Naziphiles and pro-Allied monarchists, the regime dithered and hesitated, and benefited from the disinterest of Hitler in the Spanish peninsula. Fortune, therefore, rather than skill enabled Franco to keep Spain out of World War II, as his inclinations were to enter the conflict on the side of the Axis, but only under circumstances of minimal risks for maximum territorial and political gains. A story of bumbling and uncertainty, Spanish foreign policy during the Second World 1. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Box 62A, OSS Report, March 12, 1942, “Current Attitudes in Spain.”

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17

War nonetheless did not result in belligerency, for which the government deserves some small credit. Luck, however, is owed the greater balance of gratitude. Spain did not enter the war, but Franco considered this possibility, entering serious negotiations with Germany on several occasions. From the early days of the Spanish Civil War until early 1941, Spain and the Axis collaborated closely, with every indication that Franco would eventually join the Tripartite Pact. Had Hitler been more interested in Spain and the Mediterranean, he could have had Franco’s entry into the war in mid-1940, although Franco’s price—territory and aid—increased at each new round of negotiations. With the failure of these deliberations in 1940 and 1941, Spain continued to support Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy with workers, soldiers, and economic agreements, but the relationship transformed. This chapter, and the one that follows, focus on the nature of the transformation, as well as the failure of both sides to arrive at what the world expected: a Spanish declaration of war on the side of the Axis.2 Historians have argued about the course of Spanish neutrality for decades, with two primary perspectives at stake. One possible explanation for Spain’s remaining out of the Second World War was that it followed a consistent policy of national self-interest, supporting whichever side was strongest at the moment, hoping at all times to gain economic and political advantages by playing the Axis against the Allies. While Franco was anticommunist and authoritarian, he could accept a victory by either side as compatible with Spanish interests. The other possibility, and one that seems to have emerged as dominant since the end of the Cold War, is that Franco really did prefer an Axis victory, wanted to enter the conflict to gain territory, and was only prevented from doing so by the ineptness of German foreign policy. Continued Spanish neutrality, therefore, was not the result of clever diplomacy or caution on the part of the Caudillo, but because of miscalculations made by Hitler and his lieutenants. This interpretation is actually closest to that held at the time by most diplomats, Axis and Allied, and has much to commend it.3 Both Germany and the Allies believed that this question was one of timing and preparation, rather than inclination, although both would prove wrong. Spain never became a belligerent in World War II, although it did negotiate toward this end. It also collaborated politically, economically, 2. Javier Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 12–13. 3. Elena Hernández-Sandoica and Enrique Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 242–43.


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and militarily with Nazi Germany, even sending its soldiers to fight alongside Germans on the Eastern Front. What explains this unexpected result: a pro-Axis alignment, but never entry into war? Spain was a small power that in no way could influence the development of the belligerent events in a decisive way, and was in a tragic economic condition, as a consequence of the civil war. It was also a country which, for ideological reasons, had an obvious proclivity toward the Axis, and also was brought closer to it for more immediate reasons, because its victory in the civil war would not have been possible without its help. If to these factors we add the caution of Franco little given to ideological fervor, and the very relative interest Hitler had for Spain and, in general, for a Mediterranean strategy, we will have the general lines that will enable us to understand what happened with the Spanish position in the global conflict.4

While this theory does not make clear the entire course of Spanish foreign policy during the Second World War, as a general statement it summarizes the broad outlines of these events. On April 1, 1939, General Francisco Franco, sick in bed with fever, issued this statement: “On this day, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the Nationalist troops have reached their final military objectives. The war has ended.”5 The Spanish Civil War, which had begun almost three years earlier, ended with a Nationalist victory, leaving the nation in the hands of General Franco and his supporters. The Nationalists won because they had internal unity, a more cohesive and better-led army, and consistent foreign support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The defeated Republicans had surrendered or fled into exile to France or the Soviet Union, the latter being the only nation to provide substantial military assistance to the Republic of the Popular Front. The other major powers had tried to stay out of the conflict, creating a Non-Intervention Agreement (NIA) in a failed effort to prevent foreign aid and military forces from getting actively involved in the Spanish Civil War. Arms inspections at the borders, international naval patrols to intercept weapons shipments, and promises by dozens of nations not to provide military equipment to either side did little to prevent arming of both sides. In the end, the NIA had the most impact on the Republicans, who 4. Javier Tusell, quoted in José Luis Casas Sánchez, ed., La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 35. 5. Arriba, April 2, 1939.


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were unable to buy weapons from Britain and France, traditional suppliers to the Spanish military. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, however, kept Franco’s Nationalists well supplied with arms and also provided diplomatic support in international organizations such as the council of the NonIntervention Agreement.6 By the end of the Civil War, Spain had endured tremendous suffering. The nation had been devastated by the conflict, with massive losses of life and property, perhaps a quarter of a million dead, almost three hundred thousand political prisoners, and initially the same number of exiles, although half of them would return to Spain within two years. The leadership of the New State was closely tied to the Axis. Franco’s forces had benefited from tremendous German and Italian assistance, with these two states providing diplomatic support, weapons, training, ammunition, and even direct military intervention. German and Italian aircraft bombed Republican cities, Italian submarines sunk Republican shipping, and approximately fifty thousand Italians and five thousand Germans fought in the conflict on Franco’s side. Franco was very impressed by the strength of the two Axis states, especially Nazi Germany, and modeled many elements of his new regime after their examples. The single totalitarian party, the cult of personality around the nation’s leader, an energized youth movement, and demands for sacrifice by all for the national community were developed first in Fascist Italy, but were perfected by the Nazis. Spain also sent delegates to Nazi-organized international conferences on a variety of issues, including leisure activities, journalism, youth organization, and artisanal work. Falangists traveled frequently to the Third Reich as guests of the Nazi Party, sponsored by the Berlin Ibero-American Institute, a quasi-governmental entity headed by General Wilhelm von Faupel, Hitler’s first ambassador to the Nationalist insurgents during the civil war. The attendance by Industry and Commerce Minister Demetrio Carceller to the Leipzig trade fair in 1941 was just one example of these visits to Germany by prominent Spanish governmental or Falangist representatives. Also visiting Berlin a few months later in December was General José Moscardó, hero of the Siege of the Alcázar, leader of the National Council for Sports, and Franco’s representative to bring encouragement and the aguinaldo (Christmas gift) to Spaniards working in Germany or serving in the German army. These presents were substantial, contained in more than two thousand crates and shipped on a special train chartered 6. Jean Grugel and Tim Rees, Franco’s Spain, 23; Rafael García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 303; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 24–25, 34–35.


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by the Spanish government. The train arrived on Christmas Eve, and among the donations, collected by the Sección Femenina and other Falangist organizations, were cognac, real tobacco, and coffee, and bonbons for the Spanish nurses attached to the unit.7 Despite the importance of these visits to the Third Reich by Spanish dignitaries, in its sympathies Spain inclined far more toward Italy. The cultural similarities, Catholic heritage, and more generous attitude of Mussolini concerning the civil war debt encouraged these feelings, even as Spanish leaders understood that Germany was the dominant member of the Axis. The pro-Italian sentiments of Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, who had received his legal training in Bologna and was a friend of the Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, also contributed to the preference among many Falangist leaders for Fascism over Nazism.8 The visit of Ciano to Spain in July 1939 illustrated this identification, as the Spanish government and Falange hailed the Italian diplomat with mass rallies and headlines asserting the long-standing historical and political collaboration between the two states. Franco and Serrano made sure that the reception for the count was nothing if not dramatic, assembling more than one hundred thousand Falangists in Madrid to awe Ciano. Count Ciano’s arrival in Barcelona on July 10, 1939, escorted by an Italian flotilla of warships, received tremendous coverage in Spanish newspapers. During his weeklong stay he was hailed as representative of the “free, proud and victorious” power of the two Latin states, Italy and Spain. Spain also publicly supported the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939, praising Mussolini’s effort “to re-establish order” and giving thanks that the Balkan state was under the “beneficent tutelage of a Great State.”9 Franco did not always accord public prominence to the friendship between Nationalist Spain, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy, and the great debt owed by Franco to his two recent allies. In the victory parade held in Madrid on May 19, for example, the Spanish dictator did not mention the indispensable help the two Axis nations had provided to the Nationalist insurgency, despite the presence in the march of both Italian and German 7. Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 244; Arriba, July 21–22, August 8, 1939, March 1, 12, December, 8, 29, 1940, August 31, December 10, 26, 1941, January 1, April 10, 14, 16, 18, 25, June 12, 16, July 29, August 22, 29, September 12, 13, 18, 20, October 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, 24–25, 27–29, December 1, 5, 10, 12, 15, 1942. 8. García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 305–6; Paul Preston, “Italy and Spain in Civil War and World War, 1936–1943,” 174–75. 9. YA, July 11, 14, 16, 1939; Arriba, April 8–9, July 1, 4, 10, 12–13, 16, 1939.


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soldiers and aviators. Perhaps he wanted to diminish international claims that the Nationalist victory came because of foreign intervention rather than through the force of the rebel armies. In a phrase that might have provided comfort to the Nazis, he did mention the ongoing struggle against “the Judaic spirit that permitted the alliance of great capital with Marxism,” enemies which continued to confront the Nationalists even in victory. Three days later, Franco attended the departure of the Condor Legion from Spain, praising the unit of “brothers from Germany . . . a fraternal nation,” and expressed similar sentiments toward the Italians at another ceremony, as representatives of “friendly nations.” Accompanying the Condor Legion back to Germany was an escort of six Spanish generals, one rear admiral, and forty-five pilots, tasked with learning from and increasing collaboration with Germany.10 While more sympathetic to Italy, in many ways Spain followed the German example in politics, creating a single totalitarian and fascist party, promoting extreme anticommunist, antidemocratic, and anticapitalist sentiments. Franco also embraced territorial ambitions and support for a New Order in Europe, led by the fascist and authoritarian states. It seems clear that in early 1939 Franco considered himself an ally of Germany and Italy, and that the feeling was mutual. Western nations also expected Spain to be an Axis partner. Spain and Germany signed a secret treaty of cooperation in March 1939, adding to a preexisting agreement with Italy from November 1936. On April 7, 1939, Spain also joined the Anti-Comintern Pact, a nonbinding agreement to fight international communism, “to confirm its defensive attitude in regards to the dangers which surround it.” Germany saw the Anti-Comintern pact as a “symbolic gesture of obeisance,” and willingness to take direction from Berlin in the international arena, although Spanish adherence was more a reflection of visceral hatred of the Soviet Union after the civil war.11 On May 8, 1939, a little over one month after leading the Nationalists to victory over the Spanish Republic, General Francisco Franco withdrew from the League of Nations. This decision represented a gesture to satisfy the Axis powers, both of whom had already withdrawn from the League, Germany in 1933 and Italy in 1937. Of course, by this point the League of Nations was an empty shell, long since irrelevant to European and world

10. Francisco Franco, “Discurso Pronunicado con Motivo del Día de la Victoria,” Palabras del Caudillo, 117–22; Arriba, May 20, 27, June 8, 1939; Franco, “Discurso Pronunicado con Motivo de la Despedida a la Legión Condor,” Palabras del Caudillo, 123–25. 11. Arriba, April 8, 1939; Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms, 32, 76.


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politics, as the diplomatic debacles of Manchuria, Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War had so clearly demonstrated. Few nations put much faith in the organization, as when Yugoslavia, in August 1939, refused to take over the presidency even though they had previously committed to doing so. Grateful for Spain’s diplomatic support and hoping to improve ties, Hitler gave a special gift to Franco: a limited-edition Mercedes-Benz military touring car, with six independent wheels, eight speeds, and all-terrain capability. Only Hitler himself, along with Mussolini and Franco, had these vehicles.12 There were differences of opinion within the Spanish government about what course foreign policy should take. While Falangists were nearly all pro-German, as were substantial parts of the military, these Naziphile elements encountered opposition. Bourbon and Carlist monarchists, active Catholics, the business community, and even some officers remained more sympathetic to the Allies. The British facilitated these pro-Allied sentiments with bribes to friendly generals during the war, including the highly placed and influential Antonio Aranda, Alfredo Kindelán, Gonzalo Quiepo de Llano, and Luis Orgaz. By some estimates, these inducements rose to a total of £2.5 million at the end of the war. While these transfers may have encouraged stronger resistance to pro-Axis policies, in any case Franco directed foreign policy. The advice of his first foreign minister, General Francisco Gómez Jordana, who occupied the office from January 1938 to August 1939, also had a moderating influence on the Caudillo. Jordana, who held a minor title of nobility, was monarchist and conservative in his sentiments, leading him to identify more with the United Kingdom than Germany. His policies followed strict neutrality in regards to the Great Powers leading up to the beginning of the Second World War. Spain’s success during the Civil War in avoiding firm commitments to the Axis also placed Franco in a stronger position, but he still leaned strongly toward Germany and Italy in April 1939.13 However, in the summer of 1939, as war approached, Spain changed its policy. Spain needed to mend fences with Britain and France, since its economy was dependent on trade with them. The arrival of accredited 12. Arriba, May 9, 1939, January 7, 17, 1940; Payne, The Franco Regime, 254; HernándezSandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 244; YA, August 12, 1939, January 7, 1940. 13. José Luis Casas Sánchez, ed., La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 47; Denis Smyth, Diplomacy and Strategy of Survival: British Policy and Franco’s Spain, 1940–41, 35. The worth of £2.5 million pounds in 1940 was approximately that of $100 million in 2000. Rafael García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 304–5; Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 21–22.


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ambassadors, Sir Maurice Peterson from the United Kingdom and Marshal Henri Pétain from France, provided an opportunity to restore normal diplomacy. In 1939 and early 1940, Spain signed trade agreements and reestablished full diplomatic relations with the two nations. The French recognized the Franco regime as the legitimate owner of Spanish assets, returning to it gold, weapons, vehicles, valuables, ships, art, and everything else in its possession that had been shipped across the border during the civil war. Also during this period, the Spanish government improved relations with neighboring Portugal, a traditional British ally. Portugal had assisted the Nationalists during the civil war, but there remained some tensions over Falangist territorial designs on Spain’s Iberian neighbor. Franco ended these ambitions, reassuring Lisbon through his brother Nicolas, ambassador to Portugal.14 Spain attempted to restore trade and diplomatic links with other states also because one erstwhile friend began to insist on a new understanding. The Germans began demanding payment for everything they had sent to help the Nationalists during the civil war, an unexpected bill that soured relations just before a new foreign minister, Colonel Juan Beigbeder, took office in August 1939. Not all was well between Spain and Britain, however, as Spanish support for Irish nationalists, confrontation over Gibraltar, and Falangist contrasting of shiftless and unemployed English youths with the disciplined young men of Germany continued to be barriers to improved relations.15 Weeks later, Franco was horrified by the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of August, through which the two divided Poland and Eastern Europe. As a serious anticommunist, Franco could not help but see this agreement as a betrayal of the Anti-Comintern Pact he had just signed. Even more, the Nazi invasion of Catholic Poland on September 1, 1939, disturbed Catholic Spain. There were even protests outside San Sebastian at a vacation home owned by the German Embassy. While the difficulties the Nazi-Soviet alliance brought to international communism were of some comfort to Spaniards, the attack was still troubling. Still, the Spanish government was conflicted, denouncing Poland’s “aggressive politics against its German subjects” and supporting Nazi claims on Danzig and the Polish Corridor.16

14. Raymond Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 710–11; Christian Leitz, “‘More Carrot than Stick’: British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941–1944,” 248–49; Arriba, April 14, May 4, 7, July 30, 1939, March 19, 1940. 15. Arriba, July 21, August 2, 4, 1939. 16. Arriba, May 11, 20, 1939; Preston, Franco, 340.


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This ambivalence was also reflected in Spanish suggestions that Germany and Poland settle their differences and form an anti-Soviet alliance, or at least allow for the mediation of differences. Once the war came, however, Spain did not take sides, expressing “the surprise, the tremendous surprise” and disappointment at the beginning of the conflict. While some Spanish newspapers blamed the war on British intransigence in its refusal to modify the Versailles Treaty in regards to Poland and endorsed German proposals to annex the disputed territories, Spain did not officially endorse either side in the war. It did continue to call for negotiations to end the dispute, suggesting to the Poles they should consider “an honorable surrender, which would have saved the gallantry of the combatants and, at the same time, would have eliminated any possibility of a Soviet invasion.” Once the battle for Poland ended, the Spanish press lamented the dominance of the atheistic Soviet Union over millions of Polish Catholics, and supported the calls by Pope Pius XII for mediation and international peace negotiations.17 During the so-called Sitzkrieg, or Phony War, on the Western front, Franco “adopted a wait-and-see policy,” remembering the stalemate between Germany and the Allies in the First World War. The Spanish press even illustrated the strength of the French defenses along the Maginot Line, arguing that the Germans would find the fortifications difficult to defeat. Ties to the Third Reich were so quiet that some have even described Hispano-German relations during this period as being in “a stage close to hibernation,” with no movement in any direction. Still, as late as August 1939, Spanish newspaper writers did not list their country as one of the eight European neutral states “who want peace,” and they also reported favorably on Germany’s promise not to invade any neutral states, with Nazi leaders claiming “The military and political situation today is completely different from that of 1914.”18 Concerned about Spanish goods making their way to Germany, in September 1939 the United Kingdom declared a blockade of Spain, refusing to allow questionable trade with Germany. However, this was not a formal embargo, since Spain was not a belligerent. Near the end of September, a British mission arrived in Spain to negotiate a “War Trade Agreement,”

17. Arriba, August 22–23, 25–27, 29–30, September 1, 2, 29, 1939. 18. Christian Leitz, “Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, 1936–1945,” 136; Arriba, October 28, 1939; Rafael García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 306–7; HernándezSandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 247; YA, August 24, 29, November 3, 1939, January 19, March 19, 31, 1940.


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allowing Franco to import food, fuel, and essential manufactured goods, conditioned on verifiable guarantees that these products would not find their way to the Third Reich. By this time, Spain had signed trade agreements or commercial treaties with Germany, France, Portugal, Norway, Bulgaria, Switzerland, and Japan, in addition to the United Kingdom, and had begun negotiations for another half dozen trade accords. With the British in control of most sea lanes, however, Spain was very vulnerable to British economic pressure.19 Although Franco had stated as early as September 1938 that Spain would be neutral in case of war between Germany and the Allies and had signed good neighbor agreements relating to Morocco to preserve relations with the British and French, the Third Reich was nonetheless disappointed with the Spanish attitude. Franco had delivered much the same message in a private meeting with the Italian foreign minister during the summer of 1939. On September 4, Spain declared itself to be “strictly neutral” according to the “principles of international law,” but even this declaration came after similar statements by Portugal, Estonia, and Lithuania, nations that were perhaps more certain of their neutrality. To emphasize this new Spanish even-handedness, the regime agreed to act as the protecting power for German citizens and assets in Algeria and Palestine, as well as for French interests in Nazi ally Slovakia. Later in the war, Spain also agreed to monitor the interests of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy in nations with whom these belligerents had no diplomatic relations.20 It is fair to say, however, that Spain was not entirely neutral. Editorials in the Falangist press were usually pro-German, blaming the war on the British and French, and saluting Nazi proposals for “security and peace,” including guarantees of the October 1939 borders—after the Nazi and Soviet division of Poland — and an international conference to resolve outstanding issues. Spain complained that the Allies were not taking German proposals seriously, hardly surprising given Hitler’s broken pledges relating to Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Still, moral support for the Third Reich was little help to the German war effort, a fact recognized by all concerned.21 Many members of the Falange, wanting to enter the war on the side of Germany, were upset by this posture. They saw Germany as “the strong

19. Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 247–48; YA, March 31, 1940. 20. YA, September 3, 5, 23, 1939; Arriba, September 5, 1939, February 4, July 12, 1942. 21. Arriba, October 7, 14, 1939.


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and solid barrier against the Orientalization of Europe, and against the political and social objectives of a great and vigorous Russia.”22 They hoped that the war would help promote a social revolution in Spain, as well as gain them Gibraltar and territory in North Africa. Falangists and other Spanish imperial dreamers realized that it was only war which provided sufficient turmoil to transform their colonial dreams into reality. Still nostalgic for the American and Asian empire lost to the United States in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Falangists and many military officials hoped to find a replacement in Africa. Some even wanted to take over neighboring Portugal, and early party maps included Spain’s Western neighbor as a province. Even Spanish promises to Portugal and a nonaggression agreement signed between the two states did not completely calm fears of this possibility in Lisbon. This was not the only worry on the minds of Iberian political leaders. Conspiracies and plots against Franco with Nazi agents began to flourish during this period, but they came to nothing. The overwhelming majority of Spaniards wanted to stay out of the war, and even Franco realized that his nation was not ready to fight.23 Falangist activists did have an outlet for their ideas outside of regular diplomatic channels: the Servicio Exterior of the Falange, also known as the Falange Exterior. This branch of the party had responsibility for coordinating the activities of Spanish citizens in other countries and in Spanish colonies, and was particularly active in Germany, Morocco, Portugal, and Italy. Soon banned in many Latin American states for its clear antidemocratic ideology as well as for its suspected collaboration with the Nazi overseas organization, the Falange Exterior remained active in the states of the New Order throughout the war. Still, Falangist frustration at Franco’s legendary caution continued to fester as Spain remained out of the war.24 Even Spanish sympathies for Finland, invaded by the Soviet Union in November 1939, did not lead to any concrete action, although the Franco regime did briefly consider sending an expeditionary force to aid the Finns. Spain was disappointed both by the British, who did not even send a note of protest, and by the “disinterested” Germans who professed indifference 22. Ibid., October 3, 1939. 23. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 45; Gustau Nerín and Alfred Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 41, 77; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 307–8; AMAE, LegR1058, Expediente 8, Letters, July 26–August 26, 1938, Nicolás Franco, Spanish Ambassador in Portugal, to Spanish Foreign Minister; HernándezSandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 246. 24. Arriba, July 6, 1939, April 29, July 10, August 13, November 12, December 31, 1942.


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to the Soviet invasion. Of the Great Powers, only Italy, similarly discomfited by Germany’s abandonment of Finland, received praise as standing up to the Soviet Union. The Spanish press and regime expressed strong support for the Finnish resistance to Stalin, with the council of ministers issuing a strong statement of encouragement to Helsinki in its fight against “Asiatic barbarism,” asserting Spain’s “deep sympathy toward the Finns in this difficult and heroic hour.” In December 1939, several weeks into the RussoFinnish War, the Spanish press reported favorably on the Soviet expulsion from the League of Nations for attacking a fellow member of the league, although Spain had itself withdrawn months earlier from the organization. The collapse of Finnish defenses in February–March 1940 received significant coverage, with laments about the defeat of the brave Finns, crushed underneath the overwhelmingly superior Soviet forces, but not without bloodying Stalin’s Red Army.25 The situation began to change dramatically in the spring of 1940, with the stunning German victories over Scandinavia in April. Supporting German claims that the Allies had begun this conflict by mining Norwegian harbors, Spain expressed little sympathy for Norway or Denmark. The attack several weeks later on the Low Countries and France elicited a different response. An editorial in Arriba, a usually pro-Nazi paper, offered “respectful admiration” for Belgian King Leopold and “the noble” Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, as they defended their nations. Spain also expressed the hope that the campaign would be brief and without significant civilian casualties. Additionally, the rapid collapse of the Belgian and Dutch military forces did not receive the same positive treatment as the Norwegian and Danish capitulations had the previous month.26 The Nazi invasion of France in May 1940 transformed Spain’s strategic position. Within a few weeks, by early June 1940, there were German troops heading for the Spanish border, and there was no guarantee that they would stop there. Despite an insistence that Spain would continue in its “strict neutrality,” the Caudillo was already reconsidering the strategic position of his nation. Worried about the changing circumstance, but also hoping to take advantage of the new situation, perhaps to gain some of France’s North African territories, on June 3 Franco sent one of his top generals, Juan Vigón, to meet with Hitler. Vigón’s mission was to find out what the Germans were willing to give in exchange for Spain entering 25. YA, December 1, 3, 7–8, 1939; Arriba, November 12, December 1, 3, 6, 8, 15, 16, 1939, February 15–17, March 9, 13, 1940; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 69. 26. Arriba, April 10, May 11–12, 15–16, 18, 29, June 16, 1940.


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the war. Hitler was not yet interested, however, as his hands were full of defeating the French, and he kept Vigón waiting in Berlin for six days after the Spanish general’s arrival on June 10.27 In the meantime, the French armies collapsed and Italy entered the war on June 10. Two days later Franco, in a show of affinity for the Axis, declared Spain’s nonbelligerency and support for Germany and Italy. Italy had declared its own nonbelligerency in September 1939 before entering the war in 1940, and most observers saw this move by Franco in the same light: a prelude to war. Even the Spanish press agreed with this assessment, declaring that the nation could not remain indifferent with the entry of Italy and the spread of the war to the Mediterranean. Spain’s press called for “victory for those who have resolutely wanted and aided in her victory,” a phrase which could only refer to the Axis states. While Franco at that moment did not enter the war, he did allow German submarines to use Spanish waters and encouraged cooperation with Nazi intelligence agencies, despite official denials of both actions. It seemed only a matter of time before Spain joined the Axis.28 When Hitler did meet Vigón on June 16, the German leader was noncommittal when the general mentioned Spain’s wish list: Gibraltar, French Morocco, and other territory in North Africa, plus substantial military and economic assistance to prepare Spain for war. Hitler did not want to make commitments without the involvement of Italy, which also had its own designs on the territory coveted by the Spaniards. As one historian has noted, Hitler was not interested in “a high-priced alliance with a destitute country for the capture of a distant British naval base.”29 Discussions between Antonio Magaz, the Spanish ambassador in Berlin, and German foreign ministry officials on June 19 revealed a lack of enthusiasm from the Third Reich. Less than two months later, however, with the increasing resistance of Great Britain to Germany’s air power and submarine campaign, Hitler reconsidered the opportunity posed by Spanish offers to enter the war, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop suggested “Spain’s

27. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 81; Arriba, May 14, 1940. 28. Arriba, June 11–13, 1940, February 26, June 21, July 1, October 25, 1942, March 7, 11, July 6, 1944, April 8, 1945; Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 711; Leitz, “ ‘More Carrot than Stick,’” 249, 251; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 308–9; YA, June 13, 1940, June 21, 1942. 29. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 76, 113–14; Denis Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” History Today, November 1985, 12; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 251–52; Norman J. W. Goda, Tomorrow the World: Hitler, Northwest Africa, and the Path to America, 61.


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early entry into the war,” even before canceling the planned invasion of the United Kingdom.30 Spain’s interest, as ever, remained on North Africa, where the French still posed a real deterrent to any adventurism. The arrival of German troops on the Spanish border on June 27, 1940, marked a dangerous time for Spanish neutrality. Captain General López Pinto, the Spaniard commanding in the Pyrenean Sixth Military District, met his German counterpart General von Hauser at the frontier, and the two officers shared a lunch in Biarritz. At this meeting, the Spanish general’s statements about the “spiritual union” between Spain and Germany also reflected the freedom given to the occupying forces. A motorized company of Germans paraded through the streets of San Sebastian, and López authorized small groups of Nazi soldiers to travel, in uniform, in northern Spain. While the Spanish government later distanced itself from these events, put a stop to similar activity, and dismissed General López from his position, the initial appearance had a strong impact on the international perception of Spain, even causing the British ambassador to protest strongly about this violation of Spanish neutrality. Another indicator along these lines was the naming of General Eugenio Espinosa de los Monteros, a Naziphile German-speaker, as ambassador to Berlin. His meetings with Hitler, the Falange Exterior in Berlin, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop received prominent attention in the Falangist press.31 While Spain’s diplomats negotiated in Berlin, the Spanish military looked with great desire at France’s African empire, perhaps hoping to gain with military action what was impossible through talks. In late 1939 and early 1940, however, Spanish forces in Morocco were no match for the French, despite their planning for this possibility during the summer of 1940. Even the Germans suspected that a Spanish invasion of the French section of Morocco was very likely. Prospects for success, however, were not high. During this period, France had almost two hundred thousand troops in their protectorate, compared to less than half that number in the Spanish garrisons. While the advent of war on the continent forced France to send some of these units to the mainland, at the time of the armistice negotiations with Germany, France moved troops and aircraft to Morocco rather than let them fall into Nazi hands. Additionally, in its surrender to 30. Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 13; Angel Viñas, “Factores Económicos Externos en la Neutralidad Española,” 77. 31. YA, June 30, 1940; Arriba, June 28, 30, July 24, September 3, 11, 1940, February 12, 1942; Samuel Hoare, Complacent Dictator, 35–37. General López died less than two years later of a cerebral embolism at the age of sixty-five. Javier Tusell and Genoveva Quiepo de Llano, “El Enfrentamiento Serrano Súñer-Eugenio Espinosa de los Monteros,” 30.


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Germany, the Vichy government succeeded in preventing the demilitarization of its African forces, which would have paved the way for Spanish occupation, and proved its willingness to resist British and Free French attacks on its forces and territories, such as the Allied landings at Dakar, repulsed by French colonial forces loyal to Vichy.32 Even after the French surrendered, their military strength in Morocco would have made a Spanish attack impossible without significant German assistance. Another factor decreasing the chance of a Spanish attack was the French requests on June 17 and 21, 1940, for Spain to mediate armistice terms, appealing to “the moral stature” of Franco. This move was brilliant, as it would have looked extremely dishonorable for Spain to attack a nation that had asked for its good diplomatic offices. Even after the Spanishfacilitated armistice on June 22, 1940, and reductions in French garrisons in Morocco to forty-five thousand by summer 1941, a Spanish victory there was still doubtful, given the superiority of the French troops in training, equipment, and leadership.33 While Morocco was for the moment beyond his reach, Franco took advantage of the weakness of the Allies to seize “temporary” control over the international city of Tangier, in northern Morocco, “to guarantee the neutrality of the zone and city.”34 Despite assurances to the British and French that the action was to preempt an Italian invasion of the city, Tangier had long figured in the imperial ambitions of Nationalist leaders. Italian and German praise for the Spanish action also illustrated that there was little chance of an Axis attack on Tangier during this stage of the war, when the Axis powers were still committed to the battle for France. Spain rewarded German support a few months later when it allowed the reopening of the German consulate in Tangier, which had been closed since the beginning of the Second World War.35 The Tangier enclave, which had been governed by a multinational control panel, was one of the territories Spain believed it had been unjustly denied by France and Britain. For Spanish officers who had served in Morocco, including Franco, Tangier was until this seizure nearly as much of a frustration as Gibraltar. Upon the seizure of Tangier, the local Spanish and Italian communities spontaneously demonstrated in favor of the 32. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 78, 89–90, 92, 149; Arriba, July 5, 6, September 24, 26, November 12, 1940; Weinberg, A World at Arms, 160. 33. Goda, Tomorrow the World, 58–59; Arriba, June 18, 21, 23, 27, 1940. 34. Arriba, June 15, 1940. 35. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 19, 21, 75; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 251; Arriba, March 25, 1941.


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action, as did Spaniards in French Algeria and in the Spanish empire. These protests accompanied Falangist rallies in Madrid, Granada, and Barcelona supporting the return of Gibraltar, in British hands since 1714. Falangists saw the seizure of Tangier as the first step to enlarging the Spanish empire in North Africa and also gaining territory from French West Africa, the French Basque and Catalonian provinces, Portugal, and Gibraltar. At the same time, the Germans occupied Paris, declared an open city by the evacuating French government.36 Franco’s colonial ambitions came out of a long series of frustrations for imperialists and Africanistas, those who had fought in Spanish Morocco against a long-simmering Muslim uprising, especially during the 1920s. At great cost in life and treasure, Franco and other Spanish soldiers struggled against a major insurgency until the final Spanish victory in 1927. Many of these veterans believed Spain’s natural southern boundary was the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, rather than the Mediterranean. These ambitions, however, existed in a very circumscribed world, as their nation no longer was a great imperial power. After the disaster of the 1898 Spanish-American War, Spain’s empire had shrunk dramatically. In 1939, as the war was beginning, Spain’s colonial possessions did not extend beyond Equatorial Guinea, Spanish Sahara, part of northeastern Morocco, and the Atlantic coastal enclave of Ifni, surrounded by French Moroccan territory. For all of the concern of Spanish diplomats and military figures with gaining other territories, Morocco was their obsession and was in many ways the basis for the Franco regime. The army of Spanish Morocco, including indigenous troops and soldiers of the Spanish Legion, had been critical to Franco’s victory in the civil war. More than fifty thousand Moroccans from the Protectorate had made up a large element of the Nationalist army, and were especially important during the early months of the civil war. Along with Spanish Morocco, Spain’s overseas possessions were among the first to join Franco’s side, as military garrisons in Africa rallied to the rebellion.37 In other ways, the tiny Spanish colonial empire became increasingly important after the end of the civil war. In economic terms, trade between the metropole and colonies increased between 1930 and 1940, with imports from the African territories rising from 3 percent to 20 percent of the total and Spanish exports to its colonies booming from 5 percent 36. YA, June 15, 1940; Hoare, Complacent Dictator, 33–35; Arriba, June 2, 4, 9, 11, 18, 1940. 37. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 26, 28, 35, 52; Payne, The Franco Regime, 133–34.


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to 25 percent of the overall goods sent abroad. This became even more intense once the Second World War began, as Axis revisionism seemed to call into question the traditional dominance of the British and French in the struggle for colonies. Spanish efforts to gain favor with native Moroccan leaders, including by educating in Spain the crown prince of the indigenous Moroccan monarchy, were efforts to gain their acquiescence in territorial expansion into previously French areas.38 As grandiose as Spain’s imperial ambitions may have seemed, they were well planned, sincere, and possible, given the circumstances of World War II. The summer of 1940 was the “time of the illusions” for Francoist expansionists, who welcomed war as a chance to redress a half-century of injustices against Spain’s legitimate demands. Falangists echoed these sentiments, even though José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the martyred founder of the Falange, had never embraced the struggle for colonies as necessary for Spain’s greatness, and specific colonial demands had not been part of the pre-1936 program of the Falangist or Carlist movements. While speaking generally about a desire for a spiritual empire, particularly in the Americas, in his public addresses, the Falangist founder only mentioned specific colonies twice: once, to condemn the League of Nations for sanctioning Italy for its Ethiopian campaign, and on another occasion to denounce a corruption scandal in the Spanish parliament involving colonial contracts.39 Another ongoing interest of the Spanish government was its opposition to the Soviet Union and the expansion of communism. The signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact and Spain’s disappointment at the 1939 HitlerStalin Pact were examples of these policies. The Spanish press reported ominously on the Soviet annexations of eastern Poland, parts of Finland, and Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bessarabia, and Bukovina, and warned continually that the march of communism into Europe was a danger which had to be stopped. Arriba expressed this sentiment most clearly: “Firm and eternal in its decisions, in its Catholic and military calling, Spain is today, as it was yesterday, and will be tomorrow, against all Soviet expansion in the world.”40 While the Soviet Union was a distant potential enemy, the British Empire was not so far away, especially its outpost at Gibraltar. During the summer

38. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 29; YA, December 13, 1939, February 4, April 3, 1940. 39. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 22, 36–38, 40, 74. 40. Arriba, September 29, December 3, 1939, June 16, 18, 29, 30, 1940.


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of 1940 the British stood nearly alone against the Third Reich, and they feared Spanish intervention. With German aid, Spain would have been able to seize Gibraltar, close the western opening to the Mediterranean, and be in a much stronger position to take the war to the Atlantic islands and shipping routes, eventually even assisting Nazi efforts to threaten the United States. Dependent as the United Kingdom was on raw materials from India and other colonies, shipped via the Suez Canal and past Gibraltar, this entry could have been fatal for British resistance. As Churchill remarked later, “Spain held the key to all British enterprises in the Mediterranean.” Britain’s hope was that through reminding Spain of its economic dependence on the British Empire and the United States, as well as with forceful diplomacy, it might convince Franco that his nation’s interests would not be helped by belligerency in the war. Counting on the dictator’s well-known “self-interested circumspection,” the United Kingdom also benefited from the indelicacy and aggressiveness of Germany’s foreign policy.41 It was during this period of maximum risk that the British sent a new ambassador to Spain, Sir Samuel Hoare, who arrived on June 1, 1940. Initially fearing that the Germans would be invited into Spain in a few weeks, the ambassador’s first activity was to plan the evacuation of the British colony. Hoare’s mission was to use every method at his disposal to prevent Spanish entry into the war, something that would greatly complicate Britain’s defense and access through the Mediterranean. His every effort went “to keep Spain out of the German camp.” The methods employed by the ambassador most frequently were restrictions on Spanish imports of goods from the British Empire, assuring officials that Britain had no intention of attacking Spanish territory, and offering encouragement to the forces within the regime that favored neutrality or a pro-Allied position. This last effort involved bribing of influential military figures, in the hope that they would subsequently pressure Franco to stay aloof from the conflict.42 While the Falange and much of the military were at this time pro-Axis, Hoare could count on at least one potential ally: Spanish foreign minister and army colonel Juan Beigbeder. An Africanista veteran, Beigbeder had been much beloved by the indigenous Arabs and Bedouins when he had been high commissioner for Spanish Morocco, and was fluent in Arabic. 41. Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 11; Goda, Tomorrow the World, 68–69. 42. Hoare, Complacent Dictator, 5–6, 10; Arriba, May 17, 25, 1940; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 253–54.


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Despite an initial enthusiasm for Germany, partially acquired during a stint as military attaché in Berlin, the foreign minister was by mid-1940 convinced that Spain needed to remain neutral in the Second World War. With Beigbeder’s help, one of Hoare’s initial victories in the effort to convince Franco to remain at peace was an agreement on July 24, 1940, to extend the trade accord of the previous April.43 While engaging Britain, the Caudillo also began significant talks with Nazi Germany. In mid-September 1940, Franco sent his brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, to the Third Reich, along with the German ambassador in Madrid, Eberhard von Stöhrer, and an entourage of Falangists. In a personal slight, Serrano ignored the Spanish ambassador in Germany, General Espinosa de los Monteros, and met directly with Nazi leaders, leaving the diplomat fuming in the outer office while the meetings took place. Nazi officials also had little interest in meeting Espinosa and encouraged the exclusion. Still interior minister, Serrano’s mission was to test Germany’s interest in Spanish belligerency, hoping to gain promises of territory and aid in exchange for entering the war “at the hour of the last cartridges.” Speaking to the German press about “the necessity of the New Order in Europe,” Serrano was received as a significant dignitary by the Nazi government. The Spanish official, who in October would become Franco’s foreign minister, had a three-hour meeting with the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, which initially went well, with general agreement that Spain would enter the war after resolving its economic difficulties. Both sides agreed that, in the event of Spanish belligerency, Germany would gain some economic concessions in Spanish Morocco and be able to take over some British and French investments in Spain.44 However, at that point Ribbentrop casually mentioned that Germany would like to annex one of the Canary Islands as a naval and air base, and perhaps the island of Fernando Póo in Equatorial Guinea. If Morocco became Spanish territory, Germany would also expect territorial concessions for bases. Serrano announced that Spain would never surrender any of its territory to any nation for any reason. The rest of Serrano’s meetings with Ribbentrop and Hitler went more smoothly, but at the end of the month, he returned to Spain without any firm treaty. Serrano later remarked that 43. Hoare, Complacent Dictator, 32–34, 46–47. 44. Tusell and Quiepo de Llano, “El Enfrentamiento Serrano Súñer-Eugenio Espinosa de los Monteros”; Letter, January 25, 1941, Espinosa de los Monteros to Franco, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 2, 49–55; Goda, Tomorrow the World, 73– 74; Arriba, September 12, 17–18, October 2, 1940; Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 12; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 255.


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the Germans had demonstrated an “absolute lack of tact” in their approach to collaboration with Spain. Falangists considered this a great lost opportunity, as they believed Spain belonged in “a New Order as . . . one of the four nations . . . preparing this great enterprise.”45 An editorial in Arriba included Spain with Germany and Italy as one of “the founders of a European Era”: The character of the interior politics of the three Movements—each with its own peculiarity, accent, and genius—will contribute inexorably to a new continental world. Fascist politics, like that of the National Socialist and Spanish Falangist, will find its strongest obstacles in an artificial geography and in the existence of a continental political system which oppresses the rising nationalities. In this sense, the historians of our era will discover the key to the period in the superior force and political convictions of the triple friendship of the Italian, German and Spanish movements.46

October 1940 was a dramatic month in Hispano-German relations, heightened by the signing of the Tripartite Pact by Germany, Japan, and Italy on September, and the Italian invasion of Greece at the end of the month. A visit by Heinrich Himmler, chief of the feared SS and its subordinate agency, the Gestapo, demonstrated the growing ideological ties between Spain and Germany. Himmler’s assertion that Spaniards were actually still strongly Germanic, owing to their Visigothic heritage, classified them in the National Socialist worldview as worthy racial allies. The SS leader also met with Spanish police and military officials to promote law enforcement collaboration, laid a wreath on the tomb of José Antonio Primo de Rivera —de rigueur for foreign dignitaries—and received the honor of a lavish banquet at the Ritz Hotel. The original purpose of the trip—to hunt wild Spanish game —never came to fruition as a result of torrential rain, although Himmler was able to appease his desire for blood sports by attending a bullfight in Madrid. His sponsor on this trip was the Spanish director general of security, José Finat Escriva, Count of Mayalde, who hailed relations with Nazi Germany at an official dinner: “Our common enemies will not be able to say that Hispano-German friendship is not popular and sincere, nor will they be able to deny that our international political posture is profoundly popular or that Spain only wants your 45. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 126–30; Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 14; Arriba, September 29, 1940. 46. Arriba, October 10, 1940.


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friendship and spurns your plans and offers.” Himmler and the German government responded favorably to Finat, who in 1941 would become Franco’s ambassador to the Third Reich, by granting him an award of the German Eagle, reserved for friends of the party and state, for his work as head of the Spanish secret police.47 The height of the growing ties between the two states was the famous October 23 meeting between Hitler and Franco, which took place at Hendaye, a town on the French side of the border with Spain. The appointment of Serrano Suñer as foreign minister one week earlier seemed to be an indication of how the summit would go. While the Spanish press described the meeting as harmonious between “these two paladins” on this “historic day,” the truth of the encounter was quite the opposite. The event had scarcely begun when Franco launched into a long-winded discussion of how devastated Spain’s economy was, and how only substantial assistance could bring it back on its feet and ready for war. Franco went on to lecture Hitler on the historic roots of Spain’s involvement in Morocco, later professing his admiration for Germany, and his desire to do everything in his power to help his allies.48 Then Spain issued its demands: weapons, grain, oil, railcars, and other aid, in addition to being granted Gibraltar, French Morocco, and part of Algeria. Hitler had already decided that the French Vichy government, which remained over unoccupied France after the June armistice and controlled most of the French empire, was a more valuable potential ally than Spain. The Germans considered lying to the Spanish, French, and Italians, promising them the same territory, but they did not trust the Spaniards and Italians not to communicate with each other, which would throw the enterprise into turmoil. The Führer was also concerned that granting so much territory to Spain would inflame Free French sentiments in North Africa, increasing rather than solving the De Gaulle problem. So at Hendaye Hitler promised nothing specific to Franco and received nothing specific in return. The Spanish leader ended the discussions without receiving satisfaction in either territorial concessions or economic assistance from Germany and left the meeting convinced that Hitler would never agree to Spanish terms for entry. Franco’s ardor of the summer had cooled considerably when faced with the reality of German demands 47. New York Times, October 22, 1940; Arriba, September 28, October 8, 20, 22, 24, 29, 1940, March 26, 1941. 48. Stanley Payne, Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism, 227; Arriba, October 24, 1940.


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and Spanish penury, and even pro-German officers were warning that food shortages would worsen if Spain entered the war.49 At the end of the meeting, the secret agreement signed by both sides committed Spain to entering the war at a time and place of its own choosing. In exchange, Germany gave a vague promise that Spain would receive Gibraltar and territory from the French, so long as Vichy could be compensated elsewhere. Franco was never able to get a clear commitment from Germany about its territorial demands, and so the moment of Spain’s greatest temptation faded, despite the Spanish leader’s limited attempts for a few days following the summit to reopen negotiations. Within weeks, Franco had decided against war, refusing subsequent German and Italian demands that he fix a date for Spanish entry.50 Hitler, who was used to getting his way, declared that he would rather have two or three teeth pulled than meet with the Spanish dictator again. Additional summits in Germany between Serrano and Hitler in November, again excluding Ambassador Espinosa de los Monteros, also proved fruitless, but Germany still tried, as late as February 1941, to get Spain to enter the war. While this would have allowed the Nazis to attack Gibraltar and use Spanish islands as bases, they remained unwilling to make any firm promises of territory, military assistance, or economic aid. The Germans even gathered and trained the assault force to attack and occupy the British fortress of Gibraltar, an action code-named “Operation Felix.” Gathering intelligence about the British outpost with the help of a pro-Nazi Spanish divisional commander, General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, the Germans developed an operational plan for their expected attack, involving engineers, heavy artillery, special operations forces, and air units, as well as Spanish troops in a supporting role.51 Lacking a political decision, however, this unit was never deployed against Gibraltar. The only military operations taken against the Rock were attacks by Axis aircraft on Allied shipping, as well as minor raids and recons conducted mostly by Italian commandos. By early February 1941, Hitler had immersed himself in planning for the invasion of the Soviet 49. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 44–49, 62; Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 15; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 311. 50. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 48–49; Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 23, 60–66, 133–34, 136–39, 140. 51. Fernando Vadillo, Muñoz Grandes, El General de la División Azul, 105, 107–8; Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 711–12; Tusell and Quiepo de Llano, “El Enfrentamiento Serrano SúñerEugenio Espinosa de los Monteros,” 32; Arriba, November 17, 19, 1940.


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Union and had lost interest in Spain, although not without harsh words for Franco, whom he regarded as an idiot, hopeless Catholic, and “inferior character.” Unexpectedly for the Germans, their pressure on Spain in late 1940 and early 1941 had not led to Spanish entry into the war, at the moment of Germany’s strongest strategic position. This failure was due primarily to Franco’s cooling enthusiasm for the war and the Spanish leader’s belief that the Third Reich was offering “very little and offering few assurances.”52 A strong secondary factor was the continued reliance of Spain on British and American imports, particularly petroleum and grain, without which the Spanish government could not feed its people or maintain even minimal economic activity. British and U.S. diplomacy played a role, as well, with a combination of economic extortion and diplomatic finesse. Minor gestures by the British, such as the return of church relics, also encouraged Anglophile elements within the regime to work against an Axis alliance. Fortunately for Great Britain, Spanish intelligence did not learn of Churchill’s contingency plan in case of an attack on Gibraltar: an amphibious assault on the Portuguese Azores or Spanish Canary Islands to establish an alternative base to control the Mediterranean approaches. Such an attack, a preemptive strike if Spanish belligerency seemed likely, would have given Franco no option but to declare war.53 In another effort to convince Spain to enter the war, in early December 1940 Hitler sent Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of German military intelligence, to urge Franco to ally with the Axis, but to no avail. There is even some suspicion that Canaris, a secret opponent of the Nazi regime, argued the opposite case —that it was not in Spain’s interests to join the Axis.54 Even a last-minute meeting between Franco and Mussolini, held on February 12 in the Italian resort of Bordighera, did not encourage the Spanish leader sufficiently to push him toward entry. Mussolini did not lean too heavily on Franco, perhaps recognizing that his own future would be more secure had he remained neutral. Some historians have argued that Mussolini encouraged Franco to remain out of the war, hoping to gain for Italy the territories Spain coveted in North Africa. Both Franco and Serrano complained bitterly to Mussolini and Ciano of their mistreatment 52. Leitz, “Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain,” 127; Jack Green and Alessandro Massignani, The Black Prince and the Sea Devils, 107–22, 127–29; Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 38. 53. New York Times, October 22, 1940; Denis Smyth, “Franco and the Allies in the Second World War,” 195–96. 54. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 95–96.


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by the Germans. At one point in their discussion, Franco asked Mussolini if he would take Italy out of the war if he could. Mussolini’s answer —“Of course” — provided the final element to Franco’s decision. A meeting on the following day in Montpelier, France, with Vichy leader Marshal Pétain, who also expressed reluctance to enter the conflict, confirmed the Spanish dictator in his decision.55 The disloyalty of the Spaniards angered many Nazi leaders, who felt “disillusioned in view of [Spain’s] current status as a spectator” in the war, and Franco’s failure to allow them to close the Strait of Gibraltar to Allied shipping. On February 14, 1941, the German government suspended planning for Felix, as the necessary political conditions—Spanish belligerency—did not exist. While officially the delay was only temporary, most of the assault force was sent to the Balkans in preparation to assist the Italians in Greece. Other German units traveled farther east, to participate in the anticipated attack on the Soviet Union.56 After the failure of these negotiations, begun in earnest as France was collapsing in mid-1940, the Hispano-German relationship was transformed. The Third Reich no longer expected Spanish belligerency and was clearly disappointed by this outcome. Despite this failure, the Nazis received more practical assistance after this point: workers for German industries, soldiers to serve on the Eastern Front, and economic agreements to help the Nazi economy. These arrangements, however, were recognized by both Spanish and German officials as inferior substitutes for what Hitler and Franco had both wanted in 1940. The inability of these two men to negotiate the entry of Spain into the war changed what had been an intensifying association between their two nations. From February 1941 to the end of the war, Spain would remain marginal to Nazi efforts, making only minor contributions to the progress of the war: initially aiding the Axis, and eventually providing more concessions to the Allies under British and U.S. pressure. The end of serious negotiations with Germany, however, marked a key turning point for Spain: from the pivot of Hitler’s Mediterranean strategy to a peripheral nation and bystander in World War II.

55. José Antonio Girón de Velasco, Si la Memoria no me Falla, 70–72; Paul Preston, “Italy and Spain in Civil War and World War,” 175; Arriba, February 13, 14, 1941. 56. Letter, February 17, 1941, Spanish military attaché, Berlin, to Spanish Foreign Ministry, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 2, 93; Goda, Tomorrow the World, 162–63; Arriba, March 28, 29, 30, April 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, May 21, 1941.


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Chapter 2 Foreign Policy, World War to Cold War

W

ith the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the strategic position of Spain transformed overnight. For one thing, it was no longer likely that the Germans would invade Spain, or pressure it to allow for an assault on Gibraltar, no matter how frustrated they were with Franco. For another, the Nazi return to anticommunism was tremendously popular. Spontaneous anticommunist demonstrations, encouraged by members of the regime, erupted throughout Spain at the news. For many Spaniards the invasion was more than just an extension of the existing conflict—it was a “war for the cause of Europe” and a “total European enterprise” against the “virus” of communism. While Falangists, Alfonsin monarchists, Carlists, Catholics, and those with business interests may have had major political differences, they shared in hatred for communism and anger at the Soviet Union for having assisted the Second Republic. Franco appears to have briefly considered declaring war, at the request of Germany, but Spain’s economic dependence on Great Britain made this action unlikely.1 While Spain did not enter the war after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazi betrayal of Stalin began the greatest period of open collaboration between Franco’s Spain and Hitler’s Germany, a collaboration that would cause serious damage to the Spanish economy as well as to Spain’s international image and its practical interests. 1. Rafael Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 70; Gabriel Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 72.

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Instead of a declaration of war in June 1941, Franco, at Serrano’s suggestion, offered to send a volunteer division of Spaniards to serve in the German army, a proposal accepted immediately by Nazi leaders. Spain’s initiative in this regard was unique, volunteering its soldiers before being asked by the Germans to contribute to the anticommunist effort. Recruiting began with a massive demonstration in central Madrid, during which Serrano declared that “Russia is guilty” of beginning the Spanish Civil War, murdering José Antonio, and otherwise contributing to the destruction of Spain’s economy and prospects. Tens of thousands of Falangists, university students, soldiers, and others wanted to join the unit, known officially as the División Española de Voluntarios (Spanish Volunteer Division) but more popularly called the División Azul, or Blue Division, for the Falangist blue shirts worn by its volunteers. Among the volunteers were hundreds of Falangist leaders, from Labor Minister José Antonio Girón to the fascist writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero (neither of whom was allowed by Franco to join the unit). Dozens of others were allowed to join, with the permission of Serrano and Falangist Secretary General José Luis de Arrese, including the poet and propagandist Dionisio Ridruejo, National Delegate for Health Agustín Aznar, Falangist student chief José Miguel Guitarte, and two thousand Falangist university students.2 The initial wave of volunteers numbered more than forty thousand, and could have manned two or three divisions. Conservative elements within the government, and especially among the highest ranks of the army, were uncomfortable with this prospect, however, and limited the deployment to the original division while insisting that the majority of officers come from the regular army. The recruits volunteered for a number of reasons, including visceral anticommunism, ambition for higher rank in the army or Falange, a desire to find adventure, support for the German-led New Order, unemployment, or a feeling of having missed the combat of the Spanish Civil War.3 For many Falangists, the dispatch of the Blue Division was a continuation of the struggle of the civil war. As an editorial in the leading party 2. Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 263; Xavier Moreno Juliá, La División Azul: Española en Rusia, 1941–1945, 65–67; YA, June 27, 29, 1941; Arriba, June 25–29, July 1– 3, 11, 13, 15, August 7, 1941; Gerald Kleinfeld and Lewis Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia, 4–6. For the extensive bibliography on the Blue Division, see Carlos Caballero Jurado and Rafael Ibáñez Hernández, Escritores en las Trincheras: La División Azul en Sus Libros, Publicaciones, Periódicos y Filmografía (1941–1988). 3. Eduardo Sánchez Salcedo, Framan: De Serrablo a Leningrado, 35; Juan Ackermann Hanisch, A los Ordenes de Vuencia, 26–27; Kleinfeld and Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion, 9, 13.


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newspaper commented, “There has not been a postwar for the Falange, for the same reason as anybody considering themselves a Falangist still is not able to define himself as an ex-combatant. Where the title of combatant begins can be known with more or less assurance, but where his mission ends is a thing which can still not be predicted.”4 Falangists viewed the conflict raging on the Eastern Front as one more battle in a European-wide confrontation between Soviet communism and Western Christian civilization. Spain had been merely the first clash between these two worldviews, with Falangists seeing the Nazi-Soviet fight as a chance for Europe to put an end to the plague of communism. Like much of the European Right during this period, the Spanish press and Franco regime occasionally described the Soviet Union as not just communist but also “Jewish and Bolshevik,” although this feature of the struggle against the Red Army did not receive as much attention as it did in the German media. Eventually, approximately eighteen thousand men were selected for the division that left Spain in July 1941 on trains headed for southern Germany, representing the most dramatic and active form of Spanish collaboration with the Third Reich. Not all of Spain sent large numbers of volunteers: Catalonia and the Basque country, as well as the Carlist region of Navarre, sent very few to join the unit, and even in the province of Madrid, where more than three thousand volunteers signed enlistment agreements, fewer than one hundred of these came from outside the capital city.5 Four cabinet ministers and most of the leading Falangist leaders witnessed the division’s departure. Notable for his absence was Franco, who perhaps wanted to maintain some official distance from such an obvious breach of neutral behavior. Serrano, even though foreign minister, felt no such hindrance, declaring to the Nazi newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung that the creation of the Blue Division signaled Spain’s position as one of “moral belligerency on the side of our friends and against the most hated of all the enemies of the Spaniards,” the Soviet Union. In a statement several months later, the new ambassador to Germany, José Finat, Count of Mayalde, declared his nation’s support for the New Order: “We, the Spaniards, are on the side of National Socialist Germany, because we know that the profound transformation in the political, social and economic order in

4. Arriba, July 4, August 5, 1941. 5. Arriba, July 11, 1941, January 8, 1942; Sánchez Salcedo, Framan: De Serrablo a Leningrado, 38. García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 313–14; Kleinfeld and Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion, 23; Moreno Juliá, La División Azul, 98–99.


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Spain means that the Falangist revolution cannot be achieved without the definitive and complete victory of National Socialist Germany.”6 A prominent Falangist was thereby acknowledging that the fate of the Falange was tied to the success of Nazi Germany in its endeavors—a prophecy which proved accurate, although not in the manner imagined by Finat. The Blue Division received the official support of the government for its first two years on the Eastern Front. Newspapers contained frequent mentions of the heroism of the unit, memorializing fallen soldiers and denouncing the evil of communism. Congregations throughout Spain held special masses in honor of the troops, attended by prominent figures in the Falange and government, and the Women’s Section of the Falange organized drives to collect winter clothing and other gifts for the unit, especially around Christmas. Upon their return from battle, Blue Division veterans gained the same hiring preferences as those who had fought in the civil war, and one year of service in the unit credited a soldier with two in the regular Spanish army.7 One result of the dispatch of the Blue Division was the rise of General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, the unit commander, as a popular figure. With his army background, experience as secretary general of the Falange, and proven battlefield leadership, he became the focus of great attention. He had also been commander of Spanish forces near Gibraltar in 1940 during German planning to attack the citadel, and so was trusted by Nazi military leaders. The Spanish press covered his speeches hailing the courage of his soldiers, which were also broadcast over Spanish radio: “Hard is the enemy, and harder still is the Russian winter. But it does not matter: even harder is my race, supported by reason and the courage of its sons who, embracing their heroic German comrades, will in the end achieve the victory, towards which we fight without ceasing.”8 Muñoz Grandes also garnered the attention of Hitler, who saw in him a potential replacement for Franco. The Führer met several times with the general, awarding him the highest military decoration and encouraging him to remain involved in politics. Franco heard about these discussions and replaced Muñoz as divisional commander in late 1942, although he delayed this action for several months at the insistence of Hitler, who

6. Arriba, July 3, 8, 11, 13, 15, 20, 1941; YA, November 8, 1941. 7. YA, October 29, 1941, March 3, 1942; Arriba, July 25, 29, August 12, 17, September 7, 1941, January 2, February 24, March 25, June 12, 14, July 15, 24, August 25, November 3, 10, 29, December 3–4, 1942, June 16, July 23, 1943. 8. Arriba, January 2, 1942.


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wanted to ensure that the Blue Division’s commander gained sufficient victories to become even more popular in Spain. Upon Muñoz Grandes’ return to a hero’s welcome, Franco promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general—too high to command an army division again—and appointed the general in March 1943 to head the dictator’s military household, in charge of Franco’s personal security and military ceremonies. Despite the celebrations and banquets in his honor, it would not be until March 1945— just before the end of the Second World War —that Franco would trust Muñoz Grandes with troops, giving him command of the prestigious Madrid Military District.9 The Blue Division left Spain for Germany in July 1941. After several weeks of training in Bavaria at the massive military base of Grafenwöhr, Muñoz Grandes’ unit was sent to the Soviet Union, marching more than one thousand kilometers on foot to its final positions. Along the way, the division encountered Nazi racial policies in Grodno and other occupied Polish cities, where the Germans persecuted those living in Jewish ghettoes. At this point, some of the soldiers began to have second thoughts about fighting on behalf of Hitler, but it was too late for them to withdraw from service. The unit crossed into Soviet territory on September 7, reaching its final disposition in mid-October 1941. Upon reaching the German lines, the unit deployed near the northern Russian city of Novgorod. In a mostly quiet defensive sector, the Spanish unit nonetheless endured several major Soviet offensives, including the devastating battle of Krasni Bor in February 1943, and gained fame as a tough and reliable force.10 Even Hitler praised its ferocity, making special note of the unit in a speech at the annual Winterhilfe (Winter Aid) charity meeting in Berlin: Germany and Italy, like Spain and some other European nations, among them Romania, have been able to defeat communism. The rest of the world is not in any condition to defeat us. If we consider all of our allies and all of those fighting on our side, Romanians and Hungarians, Croatians and Slovakians, and particularly the Finns and the Spaniards in the North, we can say that we are leading a true European Crusade. All of Europe has united, as in the past, against the Huns and the Mongols.11 9. Ibid., December 16, 18, 19, 1942, January 3, 6, 9 13, 1943; Payne, The Franco Regime, 347; Stanley Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, 385. 10. Vadillo, Muñoz Grandes, 261, 263, 271–74, 291–92; Sánchez Salcedo, Framan: De Serrablo a Leningrado, 44; Arriba, September 7, 1941, February 20–21, March 27, April 14, 27, May 27, June 1, July 7–8, August 13, 1943. 11. Arriba, October 1, 2, 1942.


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In December 1942, Franco replaced General Muñoz Grandes with the more reserved General Emilio Esteban Infantes, who did not share his predecessor’s enthusiasm for revolution and Spanish entry into the war. Despite the sidelining of Muñoz Grandes, the Germans made strong efforts to maintain links with Blue Division veterans, sponsoring special events, movie nights, and vacations for them in Spain.12 The dispatch of the Blue Division angered the British, causing them to tighten their economic restrictions on Spain and also to revive their plans to attack the Spanish Canary Islands. In August and September 1941, the British assembled a strike force to take the Canaries preemptively. With U.S. encouragement, and fears that the Germans were on the verge of sending forces into Spain, expected on September 15, the British prepared their attack. Only last-minute reconsidering by Churchill, who perhaps realized that he did not have a proximate cause to justify this attack, canceled an invasion that would have succeeded where Hitler had failed: to bring Spain into the war.13 While the Blue Division went to assist the German Army Group North, another group of Spaniards went to Army Group Center, assisting in the push toward Moscow. This unit was the Escuadrilla Azul (Blue Squadron), a unit of pilots and ground crews recruited from the Spanish air force. Flying Focke-Wulf and Messerschmidt fighters and fighter-bombers, they accumulated an impressive record on the Eastern Front, destroying more than 150 Soviet aircraft in their first year, with only a handful of losses. The unit remained in central Russia, despite requests by Muñoz Grandes that they be attached to the Blue Division, until their withdrawal in late 1943.14 This collaboration upset the Allies, who saw the Blue Division and Squadron as indications of things to come. Britain and the United States also protested at extensive Spanish intelligence cooperation with Germany and Italy, including its permitting of a German military intelligence post in Algeciras, near Gibraltar, to spy on Allied shipping and aircraft, and toleration of Italian violations of Spanish airspace and waters. The British feared that Spanish legations and embassies, including the one in London, served as surrogates for Nazi espionage in Allied nations. Spain also allowed 12. Arriba, January 2, March 14, July 23, October 1, December 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 31, 1942, January 3, March 3, 14, 21, 28, April 6, 16, 18, 1943; Kleinfeld and Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion, 231–37. 13. Smyth, “Franco and the Allies in the Second World War,” 201–3. 14. Arriba, October 4, 1941, March 1, September 8, 13, December 19, 24, 1942, June 10, 12, 18, 19, July 9, 1943.


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German submarines to meet supply and fuel ships in the Canary Islands. A speech by Franco, in which he declared, “the Allies are approaching the war the wrong way and have already lost it,” was not well received in London or Washington. For these words, as well as for the overseas activity of the Falange in the Americas, the United States imposed an oil embargo on Spain, cutting the flow of petroleum to a trickle. In addition to angering the Allies, Spain’s small gestures of collaboration did not satisfy the Germans, who wanted more. Even after the Spaniards expelled some German military intelligence officers in 1943, it continued to allow an Italian military mission to operate in Ceuta, Spanish Morocco, until British protests forced the regime to order it closed as well.15 In addition to soldiers, Franco also sent a new ambassador to Germany in the summer of 1941. José Finat, the Count of Mayalde, who had been the Spanish director general of security and a collaborator in law enforcement with Himmler’s SS, replaced General Espinosa de los Monteros, who had proved impossible for Foreign Minister Serrano to manage. Mayalde, who became known as “the ambassador of the Blue Division,” had been a close political ally of Serrano before the civil war, was a Nationalist war veteran decorated for heroism, and had held various political positions in the Falange and Franco regime. The Germans were pleased by the appointment of this Naziphile and gave prominent coverage to his activity in the Third Reich.16 While in Germany, Finat visited with the soldiers of the Blue Division before their departure for the Eastern Front, made frequent appearances at the Spanish military hospital in Berlin, praised the Blue Division at every opportunity, and claimed that “Spain believes in the victory of Germany, and all Spaniards resident in Germany should be proud to live in the nation which has begun the final battle against Bolshevism.” As an indication of his affiliation, the ambassador also became head of the Falange Exterior in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. While Finat would serve in the position for only about a year, his outspoken support for the Axis was 15. D. Pastor Petit, Espionaje: La Segunda Guerra Mundial y España, 227; Javier Juárez Camacho, Madrid, Londres, Berlín: Espías de Franco al servicio de Hitler, 20–23, 101–4, 135–36; Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 51; AMAE, LegR2156, Expediente 117, Verbal Note, August 25, 1943, British Embassy to Spanish Foreign Ministry. 16. Arriba, January 24, July 15, 1941. Upon his removal from the ambassadorship, Espinosa became captain general of the Sixth Military District, along the French border, one of the most strategic commands in the Spanish military, although he later was dismissed from this position for his intemperate remarks.


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one of the most important Spanish examples of collaboration with Germany during the Second World War.17 The entry of the United States into the Second World War on December 8, 1941, and the subsequent German and Italian declarations of war against the United States, did not significantly change Spanish policies. Many Spaniards were shocked at the Japanese attack, described as “a terrible surprise” by one newspaper, but nonetheless Spain reaffirmed its pro-Axis nonbelligerency less than two weeks after Pearl Harbor. The American entry into the war did not lead to immediate changes in Spanish policies, but the transformed situation did increase U.S. demands on the Spanish government and was one more factor that “gradually eroded Franco’s belief in a final Axis victory.”18 Still, many Falangists retained their enthusiasm for the New Order, writing articles in the Spanish press celebrating the achievements of Hitler and Nazi Germany, and identifying Spain as an Axis ally. Spanish Naziphiles also justified Germany’s war on the Allies, denouncing the Treaty of Versailles and “Marxism, capitalism and Judaism” as international conspiracies dedicated to “the ruin of the German people.” According to these supporters of the Third Reich, the Western and Central European Christians had to stand united against “the Europe of the steppes, the Russo-Mongolian, anarchic and bestial Europe, with an implacable hatred of the humanist ideal developed through the fusion of ancient and Christian cultures.”19 Economic sanctions against Spain continued during spring 1942, in large part because of a particularly inflammatory speech made by Franco on February 14. Addressing the army garrison in Seville, the Caudillo praised Germany as a bulwark against communism and declared that “if there would be a moment of danger, if the road to Berlin would be opened, there would not be merely a division of volunteers, but a million Spaniards would be offered . . . although, as I say this, I have the security that this won’t be necessary.” In addition to infuriating the Allies, this statement also bothered the Germans, the ostensible beneficiaries, with its hint that Berlin might some day actually be threatened with Soviet occupation. Also during this period, the Allies began to add substantially to their black list

17. Arriba, August 5, 17, September 12, 1941, February 3, 1942. 18. García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 315–16; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 262; YA, December 9, 12, 20, 1941; Arriba, March 23–27, April 8, 12, 13, 21, 1945. 19. Arriba, January 25, March 12, 1942.


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of Spanish companies, a compilation of close to one thousand firms by the end of the war, which were banned from trade because of dealings with the Axis.20 The United States delivered this increasing pressure through their new ambassador in Spain, Carlton Hayes, who arrived in Madrid on May 16, 1942. While Hayes was a Catholic and a historian of France and nationalism, he had little experience with Spain. Still, the Spanish government welcomed his nomination, believing it could augur a period of better relations and less economic stress. Nonetheless, Franco made the diplomat wait almost three weeks before he was allowed to present his credentials. Hayes did argue against excessive demands on the regime, but in general he continued the posture of his predecessor, attempting to encourage helpful behavior by Spain and punishing acts of support for the Axis.21 Allied pressure to be more neutral increased at the end of 1942. By October 1942, Spain had already begun to shift its policies to be less favorable to the Axis. These measures took hold especially after the American and British occupation of Morocco and Algeria in November 1942. In addition to bringing Allied forces within reach of Spanish Morocco and the mainland, these landings also ended any of Franco’s dreams of increasing the size of his empire. Despite Allied guarantees of Spanish territory, delivered by U.S. Ambassador Hayes to a frightened Spanish foreign minister several hours before the predawn invasion, for the first time in the war Franco’s regime was vulnerable to attack by both sides. Increased German troop concentrations along Spain’s northern border, as well as the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942, added to the Spanish sense of vulnerability. In response to this dual potential threat from the Allies in Africa and the Axis in France, Franco ordered a partial mobilization of the Spanish Army. As a consolation to Spanish fears, the Allies guaranteed that they had no intention of occupying or otherwise threatening Spanish possessions in North Africa, a concession of great comfort to Madrid.22 20. Francisco Franco, “Discurso Pronunicado ante la Guarnición de Sevilla,” Palabras del Caudillo, 236; Arriba, February 15, 1942; Neville Wylie, “Introduction: Victims or Actors?” 6. 21. Arriba, April 12, May 17, 20, June 10, 1942; Carlton J. H. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 1942–1945, 15, 25–32. 22. Javier Tusell, “Un Giro Fundamental en la Política Española durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial: La Llegada de Jordana al Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores,” 291–93; Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 172, 203; AMAE, LegR2300, Expediente 4, Minutes, December 24, 1942, conversation between Spanish Foreign Minister and British Ambassador; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 87–92.


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At the same time, the regime replaced the Spanish ambassador in Berlin, the outspoken Naziphile José Finat, with the professional diplomat Ginés Vidal Saura, who had seen service throughout Europe and Latin America, was a close collaborator with Foreign Minister Jordana, and would serve as ambassador until the end of the war. Before the end of the year, the Spanish press was finally admitting that German forces in North Africa and on the Eastern Front had retreated in some areas, publishing maps showing the shrinking Nazi empire: an admission of the changed strategic conditions.23 In late December the British and U.S. governments began to lean even more heavily on Spain to embrace neutrality and distance itself from Germany. One particular request made by the British was that General Agustín Muñoz Grandes not be named high commissioner for Spanish Morocco, a position in which he could cause difficulties for Allied forces in North Africa. The Spanish government informed the British that it had no such plans. The British also asked that Spain intern or expel several German ships using Spanish ports as bases for refueling submarines, a request which Spain promised to fulfill. Allied pressure also came to bear on Spain’s tolerance of German and Italian military and intelligence missions in Spanish Morocco and near Gibraltar, encouraging Madrid to close these offices and deport their personnel. Spain agreed to fulfill this request, although it did not proceed on this issue with sufficient speed to appease the Allies, and allowed a continued Nazi presence, albeit more limited than previously.24 In addition, the United States asked the Spanish government to end Germany’s Lufthansa civilian flights between Barcelona and Berlin, the last connection between the two nations, as these aircraft passed over Allied territory in France. While Spain refused to accept this request and allowed these flights until just a few weeks before the Nazi defeat, it did agree to prevent Nazi and Vichy agents and refugees from entering Spanish territory. Encouraged by this response, the U.S. ambassador expressed his 23. Arriba, October 22–23, November 8, 10, 12, 18, December 24, 1942, February 16, 1943; Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 167; Arvid Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall: A Swedish Journalist in Berlin, 1941–1943, 141; Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 263–64. 24. AMAE, LegR2300, Expediente 4, Minutes, December 24, 1942, conversation between Spanish Foreign Minister and British Ambassador; LegR2300, Expediente 5, Minutes, December 2, 1943, conversation between Foreign Minister Jordana and British Counselor Yencken.


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expectation that Spain would be invited to “major international financial, economic and political conferences” after the conclusion of the war.25 During this period of intensified demands on the Spanish government, Britain and the United States no longer had to deal with Ramón Serrano Suñer, as Franco had dismissed his brother-in-law as foreign minister, replacing him with a more pro-Allied general, Francisco Gómez Jordana. The new foreign minister distanced himself from the Axis, asserting Spain’s ties with Portugal, Latin America, the Vatican, and the few remaining European neutrals. In 1942, Spain and Portugal reaffirmed their previous treaties of friendship and consultation (March 1939 and July 1940) with the declaration of the “Iberian Bloc” alliance in December 1942. By aligning with Portugal, a traditional British associate, Franco was making an implicit opening to the Allies through his Western neighbor. A similar argument could be made concerning the Americas, where nearly every state had by late 1942 signed military agreements with the United States, in most cases entering the Second World War. Britain and the United States welcomed the return of Jordana to the foreign ministry, regarding him as genuinely neutral or even pro-Allies.26 Accompanying the dismissal of Serrano was the replacement of the Nazi ambassador to Spain, Eberhard von Stohrer. Stohrer had been a close colleague of Serrano, and his relief signaled the end of the high period of Hispano-German collaboration. Despite their misgivings about Hitler and Ribbentrop, most Francoist leaders had warm feelings about the ambassador, who spoke fluent Spanish and had been in Spain since 1937. Sending him off with an honorary decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, Jordana also held a farewell dinner in his honor, attended by the majority of the Council of Ministers. Stohrer’s replacement was Helmuth Karl von Moltke, whose orders were to encourage Spanish resistance to Allied economic and political demands, as Germany had already given up hope of increasing Spain’s collaboration with the Axis.27 Spain tried to exert political and cultural influence in the Americas during the Second World War, creating the Consejo de la Hispanidad 25. AMAE, LegR2300, Expediente 2, Note, September 4, 1944, conversation between Spanish Foreign Minister and U.S. Ambassador. 26. Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 262–63; Tusell, “Un Giro Fundamental en la Política Española durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 285–87, 291; Arriba, February 13, September 4, December 20, 22, 1942, October 13, 1943. 27. Arriba, January 3, 5, 12, 1943; Payne, The Franco Regime, 319. Moltke died unexpectedly two months after taking office and was replaced by Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff. Arriba, March 23, 26, April 18, 21, 22, 24, May 1, 1943.


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(Council of Hispanism) to promote its values. The council incorporated in its leadership dozens of prominent Spanish political, military, religious, cultural, and diplomatic figures and was led by the foreign minister, who appointed its directors. The regime also encouraged Latin American states to resist U.S. demands for military-base agreements, military alliances, and entry into the war. For example, the Spanish press praised Uruguay for refusing to allow U.S. naval and air bases on its territory. Franco also forged particularly close ties with Argentina, the leading anti-U.S. nation in the hemisphere, buying Argentinean wheat and beef, products that would become particularly important in the postwar period. Spain also supported the territorial revisionism of Latin American states, including returning the Falklands/Malvinas to Argentina, British Honduras (Belize) to Guatemala, and several small islands off the coast of Venezuela that were under British rule.28 It does seem that by early 1943, Franco had begun to reconsider his identification with the Axis. Massive casualties in the Blue Division, which despite replacements was down to twelve thousand soldiers in early 1943, were in contrast to the easy victory Franco had expected. After the initial surges of interest and despite German guarantees of pensions for widows, orphans, and disabled soldiers and hiring preferences by the Spanish government given to veterans, by 1942 and especially in 1943 it was much more difficult to fill quotas for the replacement battalions. Particularly painful for Falangist leaders were losses among party activists and cadres, despite efforts by the Falange to speed the repatriation of key personnel. The difficult winters, fierce Soviet resistance, and unexpected inability of the Nazi forces to crush the allegedly weaker Red Army had transformed what the volunteers expected to be a triumphant march into a bloody stalemate. Even the institution of a replacement system in early 1942, bringing home volunteers and sending new recruits in their place, did not address the problem of ongoing losses. The continual news stories about deaths of prominent Falangists on the Eastern Front and memorial masses for their families could hardly have encouraged recruiting efforts in 1942 and 1943.29 It was the German defeat at Stalingrad, however, as well as dramatic reductions by the Allies in oil shipments to Spain, which finally convinced

28. Arriba, October 13, November 3, 7, 19, 21, 23, 1940, January 8, February 9, March 28, April 8, 1941, December 13, 1942. 29. Ibid., January 1, February 26, March 8, 25, April 23, May 3, 18, 19–21, 23–24, 26–27, June 5, 7, 10, 12, 17, 19, 25, July 4, 5, 14–15, September 22, December 24, 31, 1942, January 13, 1943.


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Franco to shift back to neutrality. These changes went on despite weeks of Falangist articles about the heroic defense of Stalingrad and continuing visits by Falangist leaders to Berlin, including by the secretary general of the party. Continuing a practice begun in 1940, the British and Americans used the threat of withholding food and fuel as an effective tool; Franco, who was already seriously doubtful of an Axis victory, adjusted his foreign policy accordingly.30 Still, the Spanish government could not completely transform its conduct overnight and in some ways continued to assist Nazi Germany. Spanish workers and soldiers remained in service to Hitler during most of 1943, and the Spanish press undertook a major campaign to discredit Allied strategic bombing of European cities as inhumane. Highlighting civilian casualties from these attacks, Spanish journalists also lamented the destruction of priceless cultural and historical treasures in Germany and Italy. Editorials demanding “stop the barbarism!” and articles on precision Luftwaffe bombing of military targets were contrasted with reports of indiscriminate Allied targeting of urban areas. The irony of this campaign, promoted by the same regime that had endorsed the German and Italian bombing of Guernica during the civil war, was perhaps lost on the Spanish press. Of course, no Spanish editorials had denounced the Nazi air blitz on the United Kingdom in 1940–1941. The Spanish press also downplayed the Axis defeat in Tunisia in May 1943 that ended the war in North Africa, arguing that Nazi leaders had only planned the operation to delay the Allies and never imagined a victory was possible.31 The fall of Mussolini in July 1943 added urgency, and even convinced some Falangists that the war was all but over. Many in the Falange began to be concerned about their own political survival, seeing how quickly the Fascist Party had collapsed in the wake of Il Duce’s overthrow. Franco, perhaps worried about his own future, allegedly wept as he told his ministers of the Italian collapse. Still, the Franco regime’s refusal to grant formal diplomatic recognition to Mussolini’s puppet state of the Republic of Saló in northern Italy, despite intense German and Falangist pressure to do so, was a strong signal of Spain’s realignment. The Spanish press in late 1943, under the firm control of the state, also began to be more balanced in their coverage of the war and no longer reflexively echoed Axis

30. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 41; Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall, 133; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 316–18. Arriba, January 16, 17, 19–22, 24, 27–29, February 3–5, 1943. 31. Arriba, March 4, 14, 19, April 6, 16, May 9, 13, 14, 30, 1943.


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propaganda. Nazi leaders looked with increasing alarm at these changes, but had little to offer Spain to dissuade Franco.32 Throughout 1943, Spain facilitated the return to the Allies of almost two thousand British and American airmen, shot down over France and delivered to the Spanish border by elements of the French Resistance, while keeping Axis pilots interned. Franco also permitted more than fifteen thousand French and Allied refugees from Vichy France, and accepted the credentialing of a diplomat from DeGaulle’s Free French forces. Although much of this resulted from naval interdiction by the British navy, Spanish trade with Germany also fell precipitously by 1944.33 Still, Spain continued to sell raw materials to Germany that helped its war effort, including tungsten ore and other minerals, infuriating the Allies. Even as Franco made efforts to align his foreign policy in a more neutral position, he allowed the Third Reich to maintain access to Spanish markets, even granting a one hundred million reichsmark credit to Germany out of Spain’s civil war debt. These measures caused the United States to threaten a significant reduction in oil deliveries, already at minimal levels, in late 1943 unless tungsten ore shipments to Germany ended. Exasperated by Spain’s unwillingness to budge, a total oil embargo was finally imposed in January 1944. In May the Spanish government finally agreed to limit tungsten ore shipments to Germany to forty tons per month, deliveries which ended in August with the Allied liberation of southern France. In exchange, the United States renewed oil sales to Spain, albeit still at minimal levels.34 Despite these economic confrontations, in political terms the Spanish government moved much closer to actual neutrality during the same period. In the late summer of 1943, Spain began asking for the withdrawal of the Blue Division, to which the Germans finally agreed in October. On October 1, Franco announced a shift from nonbelligerency to neutrality, and a few weeks later the Blue Division withdrew from the Eastern Front. During its time on the front lines, the unit had endured, out of forty32. Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 421–23, 436–37; Preston, “Italy and Spain in Civil War and World War, 1936–1943,” 175–76; Smyth, “Franco and the Allies in the Second World War,” 186–88; Arriba, August 18, September 9, 12, 14, 29, November 18, December 12, 1943. 33. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 54; Pastor Petit, Espionaje, 803; AMAE, LegR2300, Expediente 3, Minutes, October 19, 1944, meeting between Mr. Truelle, Representative of the French Provisional Government, and Spanish Foreign Ministry; Leitz, “‘More Carrot than Stick,’” 255; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 320; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 105. 34. Leitz, “‘More Carrot than Stick,’” 264, 268–70.


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five thousand volunteers who rotated through the unit, eight thousand wounded, just under eight thousand sick or ill, sixteen hundred frostbitten, and forty-five hundred dead, buried in Russian soil. The Soviets had also captured more than three hundred Spaniards, of whom only about a third ever returned to Spain, and even then only after as many as twelve years of captivity.35 At the same time, Spain began trying to get its workers back from German factories. During the summer of 1943 the number of Spanish laborers in Germany was at its height of around eight thousand, but in July Spain secretly decided not to send any more, and began putting obstacles in the way of German recruiting efforts and allowing Spanish workers on vacation to stay home if they did not want to return to life under the Nazis. There was still no shortage of volunteers to go. As late as spring 1944, workers were writing petitions, in some cases begging to be sent to Germany. In one province, Huelva, almost two thousand were on waiting lists to go, including five hundred who had been there previously or had served in the Blue Division. As late as November 1944, five months after D-Day, these petitions arrived at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Labor, Falange Party offices, and even at Franco’s personal offices. But the fortunes of war and changes in Franco’s foreign policy meant that these workers would not be going anywhere.36 After D-Day and the liberation of France in summer of 1944, the Franco regime made every effort to get on the good side of the Allies, realizing that it was the United States and Britain who would dominate the postwar era. Franco also agreed, under threat of an oil embargo, to end sales of tungsten ore and other raw materials to Germany. Tungsten ore, also known as wolfram, was indispensable in aircraft and ammunition manufacturing, and Germany had no major suppliers other than Spain and Portugal. Despite ongoing collaboration in some areas, such as intelligence, by early 1944 the Spanish government finally was operating on the basis of “strict neutrality,” some eighteen months after beginning this change. As Foreign Minister Jordana declared, with some exaggeration: “Spain complies with the obligations of its neutrality with sincere and authentic good faith, putting into this all of the resources of a strong State, complete master of the situation.” With every month, Spain’s policies aligned more

35. Ángel Salamanca Salamanca, Esclavos de Stalin: El Combate Final de la División Azul, 30–32; Arriba, November 4, December 19, 21–22, 1943; Kleinfeld and Tambs, Hitler’s Spanish Legion, 328–33, 346; Moreno Juliá, La División Azul, 312. 36. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 188–92, 211–13.


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in the interests of the Allies, in a manner characterized by one historian as “benevolent submission” to the United States and United Kingdom.37 By early July, rail and road links to Nazi Germany were cut by Allied advances in France, leading to additional reductions in trade. At the same time, the Spanish press and Francoist officials began to take a more neutral position in the war. These actions, along with the withdrawal of the Blue Division, led to a speech by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the British House of Commons on May 24, 1944. Churchill praised Spain’s neutrality and importance to the Allied war effort and remarked in correspondence to the British Foreign Office that Spain had provided “supreme services” by “not intervening in 1940, or interfering with the use of the airfield and Algeciras Bay in the months before Torch (Allied landings in North Africa) in 1942.” Churchill also stated that the internal regime of Spain was a matter to be decided by the Spaniards, without outside intervention, words which must have been comforting to Franco. In September 1944, U.S. Ambassador Carlton Hayes declared that Spain was “making great efforts to collaborate with the Allies” and had entered a new stage of “benevolent neutrality.”38 Another factor that encouraged the Allies was Spain’s role in allowing Jews to escape the Nazis through its territory. The Spanish government allowed more than forty thousand Jews to escape from Nazi Europe, providing passports and transit visas to Sephardic Jews from the Balkans. Although the Franco regime did not make rescuing Jews an official policy, and could have saved far more, it tolerated the initiative of its diplomats, soldiers, and other private individuals who undertook these operations, especially in the Balkans, along the French border, and in the occupied Soviet Union.39 Unfortunately for the progress of relations with the Allies, Foreign Minister Jordana died unexpectedly of an internal hemorrhage on August 3, 1944. The expressions of sympathy from the Allies seem to have been 37. Arriba, January 27, February 1, 2, 4, 5, May 5, 1944; Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 546–47. 38. AMAE, LegR2149, Expediente 7, letter and list of goods undeliverable because of severed transportation, from Director General, Spanish Customs, to Spanish Foreign Ministry; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 259, 299–301; Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 10; García Pérez, “España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” 319; Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 713–14. YA, July 23, 1944; Arriba, September 2, 1944, August 17, 18, 1945. 39. Payne, The Franco Regime, 335; Wayne H. Bowen, “‘A Great Moral Victory’: Spanish Protection of Jews on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944”; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 164–65, 205; Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 580–81; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 112–13.


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genuine, as his second tenure as head of the Spanish Foreign Ministry had led to improved ties and the ending of most forms of collaboration with the Axis. The appointment of José Félix de Lequerica, Spain’s ambassador to Vichy France, as Jordana’s successor was a poor decision by Franco. Seen as an enthusiastic supporter of the New Order, Lequerica did not have the credibility of Jordana, despite his promises of “continuity” and accurate descriptions of Spanish foreign policy as “in every moment . . . defined by the Caudillo.”40 Not everyone in Spain was happy with the new policy. Some believed Franco was betraying Germany and the New Order in Europe. The German embassy protested the change of stripes, arguing not just that Spain was no longer a friend, but that it “was not strictly complying with its duties as a neutral, because it leaned to the side of the Allies, its enemies.” The Germans complained about Spanish agreements to allow Allied civilian aircraft to land at its airports, promises to end sales of tungsten ore to Germany, and Spain’s allowing Allied refugees to pass through its territory. In an attempt to reverse this course, in early 1944 Germany offered to sell Spain grain, railcars, synthetic rubber, gasoline, and artificial fibers in limited quantities.41 This proposal, which in any case would have met only 10 to 30 percent of Spain’s needs in critical areas, did not convince Franco or the Spanish government to reverse course, thus leading to a continued deterioration in Hispano-German relations. Given its own shortages in nearly all materials, Germany would probably have failed to meet these minimal logistical promises. Adding to tensions were Germany’s arguments against a dynastic restoration in Spain, which alienated even those monarchists who had been open to collaboration with the Nazis. When Franco had, in December 1942, declared Spain to be a monarchy, the German press did not report the speech, despite ample coverage of other Spanish political events at the time.42 Several hundred Spaniards upset with Franco’s decisions defied him, leaving Spain illegally to enlist in the military forces of Nazi Germany. As late as August 1944, these young Spaniards, dreaming of adventure and believing in Hitler, headed north. Even as Romania and Finland were sur-

40. Arriba, August 4–6, 12, 13, 15, 1944; YA, August 13, 1944. 41. AMAE, LegR 2300, Expediente 1, Minutes, June 13, 1944, conversation between German Ambassador and Spanish Foreign Minister. 42. AMAE, LegR 2300, Expediente 1, Minutes, April 21, 1944, conversation between German Ambassador and Francisco Franco; Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall, 148.


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rendering to the Soviet Union, and Paris was being liberated by the Western Allies, these volunteers cast their lot with the fading Nazi empire. Dodging Spanish border guards and military patrols, they crossed into France to meet up with waiting German recruiters, who were desperate to fill the dwindling ranks of Hitler’s once-feared war machine. These volunteers continued to cross the border until southern France fell into the hands of the Allies, signaled by the departure of the last German officers from Hendaye on August 21, 1944, and the arrival of Free French forces five days later.43 Several hundred more Spanish workers and soldiers already in Germany refused to return home, preferring the excitement and danger of the Third Reich to life under Francisco Franco. As many as one thousand Spaniards served in the SS or German army during the last few months of the war, including in the final defense of Berlin in March and April 1945. While the Spanish government denied the existence of these volunteers, it had clear evidence that several hundred Spaniards had enlisted in Nazi units. Most of them died in the final battles of World War II, and only a hundred or so ever returned to Spain.44 The last few months of the Second World War saw a change in many of the important diplomatic figures. Both U.S. Ambassador Carlton Hayes and British Ambassador Samuel Hoare left their positions. Hayes’s replacement was Norman Armour, while Hoare turned over his responsibilities to Victor Mallet, who had closer ties to the new Labour government that defeated Churchill’s (and Hoare’s) Conservatives in the July 1945 elections. The Spanish government especially regretted the departure of Hayes, someone who understood “the traditional virtues of our nation and its chivalrous and religious spirit, which has greatly facilitated the increasingly close ties between our nation and the great American Republic.”45 One more time before the end of the Second World War, Spain stood on the brink of entering the conflict. This time, however, Franco briefly considered joining the Allies. The precipitating event was an attack on Spaniards by Japanese troops evacuating Manila in February 1945, which occurred in the context of larger Japanese atrocities against Philippine and foreign civilians. Ignoring Spanish neutrality and the positive reception many Spaniards had given to the initial Japanese occupation in 1942,

43. Leitz, “Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, 1936–1945,” 144; Arriba, August 16, 24– 26, 1944. 44. YA, August 24, 1944, March 14, 1945. 45. Arriba, January 12, 13, 17, March 14, 18, 25, July 25, 27, 28, 1945.


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on February 12, 1945, several hundred Japanese soldiers fired on Madrid’s consulate in Manila, and also set several buildings on fire, in an attempt to strike at the more than one hundred people taking refuge there. The Japanese even fired at those trying to escape from burning buildings. The previously friendly relations between Spain and Japan, including Spanish recognition of a pro-Japanese collaborationist as the president of the Philippines, made no difference. Even Germans in Manila received the same brutal treatment by the retreating Japanese.46 Fifty Spanish priests, monks, and nuns and 250 civilians died at the hands of the Imperial Army and Navy troops. Property damage was also severe, as the attack damaged the Universidad de Santo Tomás and completely destroyed the convent of Lourdes, the convent-churches of San Nicolás, Santa Isabel, San Agustín, the Catholic high school and church of San Marcelino, the residence and hospice of San José, the high school of Concordia, and the Spanish-owned tobacco factory “La Yebana.” All told, the Japanese destroyed 80 percent of the urban property of Spanish citizens or institutions. More than six hundred Spaniards, out of a colony of only seventeen hundred, were killed or injured as a result of this assault, victims of what the Spanish press called “the fury of Nippon.” A Catholic priest, Father J. Tejada, was decapitated by a Japanese army colonel when he tried to protest the killings. Another Catholic priest, Father José Fernandez, was bayoneted by Japanese soldiers as he tried to administer Last Rites to the dying.47 The Spanish government reacted angrily when it learned of the Japanese attack and immediately withdrew its diplomatic protection over Japanese assets, which it had been monitoring on behalf of Tokyo in Allied nations. Spain also lodged a very stern diplomatic protest at the Japanese embassy in Madrid, demanding moral and financial satisfaction for the crimes committed against Spanish citizens and property. In addition, Spain protested at the accompanying massacre of more than three thousand Filipinos, some employees of Spanish institutions. Japan did not have answers for Spain, and so on April 12, Franco broke diplomatic relations between the two nations, stating that the Japanese atrocities against Spaniards were “incompatible with the maintaining of normal and friendly relations.”48

46. Florentino Rodao, Franco y el Imperio Japonés, 482–83; Arriba, April 24, 1941, March 14, 1942, October 15–16, 1943, February 18, 1945. 47. YA, March 17, 21, 23, 1945; Rodao, Franco y el Imperio Japonés, 486–87. 48. YA, March 25, April 11, 12, 21, 1945; Arriba, April 11, 12, 1945.


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Had the Franco regime taken advantage of the opportunity to declare war on Japan, however, it might not have made much of a difference in the postwar period. The Allies had declared that neutral states which failed to declare war on the Axis would be excluded from the initial membership of the United Nations, giving March 1, 1945, as the deadline to join the war effort, even if only in name. Several previously neutral or even proAxis states, including Argentina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Persia (Iran), Finland, and Turkey, declared war against Germany and Japan in late February 1945. Spain was not among them, and it did not find out about the massacre in Manila until after March 1.49 After hearing of Spain’s possible entry into the war, the British and American ambassadors in Madrid were at pains to explain that, so late into the war, it would make no difference in their policies. Spanish proposals to send volunteers to fight against the Japanese in the Pacific did not flourish, either. In addition to realizing that it would gain him little favor with the Allies, it does seem that Franco decided against entering the war at this moment because he did not want to become an ally of the hated Soviet Union, expected to enter the military conflict against Japan soon after the German surrender. Indeed, on April 5, 1945, the Soviet Union canceled its treaty of neutrality with the Japanese empire, an unmistakable signal that Stalin was preparing to enter the war in East Asia, which he did in August—days before the final Japanese surrender.50 When the Allies met at Potsdam in July 1945, they specifically excluded Spain from membership in the United Nations, recommended that countries should break diplomatic relations, and called for the Spanish people to choose a new government through democratic means. The Allies dismissed cosmetic changes to the Franco regime, such as the holding of municipal elections and the declaration that Spain was a monarchy, as insufficient reforms. Even the naming of the lay Catholic leader Alberto Martín Artajo as foreign minister did little to gain Spain more international support. Alone among the European neutrals, Spain was not invited to join the United Nations organization, treatment bitterly received by the Franco regime, which had been at pains to highlight its own collaboration with the Allies in the last year of the war, from sales of food to feed European refugees to allowing U.S. military aircraft to land and overfly. 49. YA, February 14, 24, 25, March 2, 4, 6, April 5, 1945; Arriba, January 4, February 21, 24, 25, March 4, 28, 1945. 50. Rodao, Franco y el Imperio Japonés, 487–89, 506–7, 509–10.


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For the United States, United Kingdom, and especially the Soviet Union, however, this was a case of too little, too late, and Spain would remain internationally isolated until the early 1950s.51 So what can we conclude about Spanish involvement in the Second World War? Franco’s foreign policy went through several major transformations, shifting with the wartime balance between Axis and Allies. There seems little doubt that Franco preferred an Axis victory, seeing it as the best hope for the survival of his regime and the best chance to expand the Spanish empire. Had the Germans been a little more diplomatic, enticing Spain with specific promises of territory, they might have convinced Franco in 1940 to enter the war, even if Hitler had no intention of fulfilling the promises. Spanish entry would have led to the fall of Gibraltar and great difficulties for Britain, which after the fall of France faced the Axis nearly alone. Had Hitler pursued a Mediterranean strategy, attacking Egypt and the oil fields of the Middle East, the war might have taken another path. Spain benefited from what Serrano called “great good luck” that the Germans did not possess as much skill in the diplomatic arena as they did in the military one.52 The Nazi leader’s main focus, however, as it had been at least since the 1920s, was the Soviet Union. It was there he wanted to gain raw materials, destroy communism, and find living space for his Aryan warriors. For Hitler, Spain, Gibraltar, and Africa were side shows, important only as stepping stones to an eventual war against the United States. The personal antipathy between the Spanish and German dictators also played a role, and it seems certain that Hitler would have replaced Franco had the Axis won the war, regardless of which side Franco ended up joining. Franco did not see the world the same way as Hitler. While he hated communism with a passion, regarding it as responsible for the Spanish Civil War, his eyes were on Africa. As a veteran of Spain’s colonial wars and descendant of several naval officers, Franco wanted nothing more than to see the Spanish flag flying in North Africa from Oran to Morocco, and a mighty Spanish navy once again on the high seas. In his mind, for Spain to be great again required an empire like the one lost in the Spanish-American War of 1898.53

51. Arriba, March 17, 18, 22, 23, June 22, July 18, 21, 22, 29, August 3, 5, 21, 23, September 2, 1945; Payne, The Franco Regime, 339, 349–51. 52. Smyth, “Franco and World War Two,” 15. 53. Sheelagh Ellwood, Franco, 120; Payne, The Franco Regime, 273.


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He saw an alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, at least for the first few years of the war, as his best chance to get what he wanted, while at the same time fighting against the hated Soviet Union and what he believed were decadent and weak democracies. For Spain, for Europe, and for the world, it is a good thing that Spain did not enter the war. No positive result could have come from such a disastrous decision. Spain’s economy in 1940 could not even feed its own people, forcing Franco to rely on imports of food and petroleum from the United States and Britain, goods that would have stopped entirely had Spain declared war on the Allies. Similarly, Franco’s armed forces were in no condition to fight a protracted war. The Spanish army was large, more than five hundred thousand when mobilized, but it had no oil, little ammunition, and only two underequipped motorized divisions. The rest of the divisions marched on foot and were perpetually short of food, uniforms, boots, and rifles, most of which were from the First World War anyway. Even after several years of attempting to purchase arms from the Axis and the Allies, Spain was woefully short in almost every category. The air force had only a few modern fighter aircraft, mostly German Messerschmidt 109s and Heinkel 112s left over from the civil war or purchased in small numbers thereafter. Most of the navy had been sunk during the civil war, with only one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, one sea-worthy submarine, and a handful of destroyers able to defend Spain’s coast and maritime interests. The army had almost no tanks, trucks, or modern artillery. This weakness came despite the high percentage of the national budget that went to the military: 45 percent in 1941, and as high as 34 percent even in 1945.54 This was not the face of a nation prepared for modern war or even minor offensive operations against Gibraltar or French North Africa. Even with an Axis victory, Spain would have suffered yet another blow to its fragile economy, leaving even more of its citizens hungry and desperate. While new territories in North Africa would have helped with food supplies, the costs would have been high, as France, even after being defeated by Germany, was more than a match for Spain’s weak military. In the case of Spanish entry into the war, it seems likely that Hitler would eventually have sought to replace Franco with a more pliable leader, as happened in

54. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 30, 215; U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Box 62A, Letter and attached Memoranda, “Basic Data Pertaining to Spanish Military, Naval and Air Forces,” October 26, 1944, U.S. Ambassador and Military Attachés, Madrid, to Secretary of State.


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Hungary in 1944. Even facing an imminent Soviet invasion of Germany, Nazi leaders maintained the wherewithal to overthrow the aged Admiral Miklos Horthy, who had dared to open peace negotiations with the Allies, and gave power to the fascist Arrow Cross Party in Hungary.55 However, the war still most likely would have ended in an Axis, and therefore Spanish, defeat. Yet another conflict, with a likely Allied invasion, would have raged across Spanish soil, leaving more death and destruction to add to the previous cataclysm. Even so, for the collaboration with Nazi Germany that Franco did allow, Spain paid a price in international isolation. Pressured by the Allies, Spain was forced in September 1945 to surrender even the enclave of Tangier, its only territorial gain from the war, and the final dream of an expanded empire died. Just over a decade later, Spain surrendered its Moroccan protectorate to the newly independent state of Morocco. Spain also allowed the Allies to administer former Axis assets after the end of the war, participating in what the United States called Operation Safehaven to deny them to Nazis still at large. In only one area —allowing minor Nazi functionaries to find refuge —did the Franco regime put up a strong resistance to Allied demands after the German surrender, hiding or conferring citizenship on Nazis with Spanish supporters in the government or Catholic Church, all the while denying to the Allies that it was doing so. It also allowed German intelligence agents to remain, even after promising the Allies to deport them.56 After the end of World War II, Spain was not allowed to enter the United Nations, and suffered from a limited diplomatic and economic embargo until the 1950s, when the United States realized that anticommunist Spain could be a valuable ally in the Cold War. In summary, it was a very good thing for Spain that Franco and Hitler never worked out their differences. Spain was better off neutral, although as we have seen, it followed a convoluted path to remain that way, and suffered for this path after the war.

55. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 43; HernándezSandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 248–49; Arriba, September 6–7, November 24, 1940, June 24, 1941, March 22, 1944. 56. Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 264; Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, Legajo 13, Expediente 618, Letter, (May?) 1945, Hans Lazar to Francisco Franco; José María Irujo, La Lista Negra: Los Espías Nazis Protegidos por Franco y la Iglesia; Ellwood, Franco, 174; Arriba, May 1, July 16, 1945.


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Chapter 3 Domestic Politics

S

panish politics during the Second World War was a struggle for the ear of the king. The king, in everything but title, was Francisco Franco: arbiter of his nation’s destiny. Even more than the early modern kings of Spain, he wielded virtually unlimited power over his nation, with “greater power than any previous ruler of Spain.”1 Franco did understand, however, that he had not come to power solely through his own strength, but from his skills in maintaining a coalition and keeping his opponents off balance. Another factor explaining his ability to maintain power was his uncanny luck. For example, several of his chief military and political rivals, who could have posed serious challenges to his power, died early in the Spanish Civil War. As an able politician, he encouraged competition between his supporters, thereby preventing their union against his rule. Franco’s primary motivation was to maintain his personal power, which explains his cautiousness and disloyalty to his subordinates, many of whom were dismissed when they became inconvenient. Spanish politics reflected most clearly the ambivalent authoritarianism of the regime. Divided between several antagonistic factions, the regime never represented a clear image to the world or to its people. Was Spain monarchist, fascist, a military dictatorship, a personal autocracy, or even an organic democracy, as Franco was to claim in the final months of World War II? In truth, Spain was a little of each, but this mix was not entirely 1. Payne, The Franco Regime, 231.

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coherent, and the hesitant combination contributed to the increasing dissatisfaction of many initial supporters. Franco succeeded in satisfying none of his primary constituents, but he did muddle through with enough strength to satisfy the primary impulse of any state or bureaucracy: survival. By enabling the competitiveness of the various forces in his camp for power over the state, he diverted any efforts to force the overthrow of his regime, surviving longer in power than any other European dictator of the twentieth century. The result of this competition was a balance between the Nationalist factions, reflected in the division of high government offices during the Second World War. The most important ministerial and administrative positions within the Spanish state went to the Falange, including members from before and after the civil war (31.6 percent), representatives of the armed forces (25.1), Alfonsine monarchists (21.6), Catholic activists (14.4), and Carlist monarchists (6.6), although some estimates show a higher military presence.2 This struggle, the ongoing conflict between the various political families or informal interest groups who made up the Nationalist coalition during the civil war, was the basis for the government after the end of the conflict. The Nationalist factions had united during the civil war in their support for authoritarianism, Catholicism, and hatred of common enemies, and these shared values remained the essential glue for Franco’s New State during the Second World War and to the end of the regime.3 The initial mission of Franco’s embryonic Spanish government at the end of the civil war was reconstruction, not just of the economy but also of a functioning state. The regime began initiatives from the cosmetic, such as renaming streets that had previously carried Republican names, to the more fundamental, such as creating new political institutions. Nationalists had, as was necessary, focused almost all of their attention on the war while it was underway. Putting winning the war ahead of all other priorities had improved the cohesiveness of the coalition, but after April 1, 1939, the various elements of the winning side had widely disparate views on the form of government Spain should have.4 The first year of Nationalist governance was one of political reconstruction. While the major interest groups within the regime jockeyed for

2. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 312. 3. Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Twentieth Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898– 1998, 127; Richards, A Time of Silence, 3, 171–73. 4. Marcello Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 184–89.


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political favor with the Jefe Nacional, none were able to dominate. In August 1939, Franco reshuffled his fourteen-member cabinet and government, taking care to prevent the dominance of any single interest group. While to all appearance this move shifted power to the Falange, which now held five cabinet positions, the truth was more subtle, as at least two of these Falangists were army officers with only a nominal affiliation to the party, and none of the ministries were in the hands of camisas viejas (Old Shirts, early veterans of the party). Three cabinet officials were Falangists, one was a Carlist, and other conservative Catholics received the remaining five positions. This was to be a pattern followed by Franco during the course of the Second World War: periodic reorganizations of the cabinet to cope with internal crises. At the same time, Franco also increased his own powers, claiming the ability to issue decrees and laws without consulting even his hand-picked council of ministers, and declaring that power had been “permanently confided” to his keeping.5 Even the simplest of questions had no easy answers and could create tumult within the Nationalist coalition. For example, where would Franco live, as the head of the Spanish state? While there had been some speculation that the Nationalists would move the capital from Republican Madrid to more loyal Valladolid or Toledo, in the end centrally located Madrid remained the best option. When Franco finally moved from Burgos, the Nationalist wartime capital, he planned to occupy the Palacio Oriente, as had the kings and presidents of the monarchy and Second Republic. However, his chief adviser and brother-in-law Serrano Suñer warned him this would cause resentment among monarchists and those who saw it as being associated with the tumultuous years of the Republic. Others argued that a royal palace was hardly an appropriate place for the leader of a revolution. Franco finally settled on El Pardo, a former royal hunting palace several kilometers outside Madrid. After a few months of reconstruction—International Brigades had used it during the civil war —Franco, his wife, and his daughter moved in on March 15, 1940.6 The most important interest groups working within the Spanish government were the military, the Catholic Church and its lay organizations, Bourbon monarchists, the Falange, and Carlist monarchists. Of these groups, the first three were the most consistently influential over the life

5. Payne, The Franco Regime, 234–38; Payne, Falange, 206; Ellwood, Franco, 118; YA, August 9, 11, 1939; Arriba, August 9, 10, 1939. 6. Ramón Garriga, La Señora de El Pardo, 126–28; Preston, Franco, 345–46; Arriba, March 20, 1940.


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of the regime. The influence of the Falange faded with the defeat of the Axis during World War II. During the Second World War, “the Falange, Church and army shared power, with clear pre-eminence to the military.” While critical to the success of the Nationalists in the civil war and an important part of Spanish political life in the nineteenth century, the Carlists became less significant during the Second World War and during the regime’s later years. Despite some initial calculated ambivalence on which dynasty he favored, Franco’s preference for the Alfonsinista Bourbon line over the Carlist Pretenders was clear throughout his time in power. Franco’s initial commitment to monarchism during the civil war, promising to restore Spain’s “centuries old regime,” was vague enough to comfort both factions.7 Carlists did have a strong argument in their favor, as they had been one of the indispensable contributors to the Nationalist victory. In the first few days of the civil war, as many as forty thousand Carlist volunteers rose up in support of the military rebellion, especially in Navarre, led by the Count of Rodezno, leader of the party’s militias. The effort was essential to create a northern front for the Nationalists. Fervently Catholic, they hoped this critical support would convince Franco to allow for their Pretender, Don Javier, to take the throne. Once the war ended, however, Carlist demands that Franco install the “traditional monarchy” and reorganize Spain according to their vision, which included dismantling the Falange, went nowhere. Dissatisfied with Franco’s sympathy for the Axis, but uncomfortable becoming opponents of a regime so Catholic and conservative, most Carlists withdrew from public life.8 Despite the initial enthusiasm, Carlists were uncomfortable allies for Franco. The Carlists even briefly created their own military academy in 1936, before Franco shut it down. Even more than the threat of an independent military, Franco feared that the Carlists might form an alliance with the Falange, the other organized movement within the Nationalist camp. To forestall this possibility, Franco threatened to arrest Manuel Fal Conde, the political leader of Carlism, who in response fled to Portugal in December 1936. With the failure of efforts by Carlists and Falangists to cooperate, in April 1937 Franco was able to force the merger of the two

7. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 46; Joseph Dunthorn, “The Spanish Monarchy and Early Francoism: Alternative or Complement?” 47. 8. Josep Carles Clemente, El Carlismo en la España de Franco, 19; Martin Blinkhorn, “Elites in Search of Masses: The Traditionalist Communion and the Carlist Party, 1937– 1982,” 183; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 324–26.


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parties on his terms, subordinating both to his leadership. From exile in Portugal, Fal Conde and Don Javier de Borbón Parma, the Carlist Pretender, expelled from the party’s official organization all those leaders who accepted the unification of 1937 or who served in Franco’s administration.9 From 1937 to the end of the Second World War, there were two branches of Carlism. One, based in exile in Portugal and France, was loyal to the Pretender and Fal Conde and supported the Allies, even working with the French Resistance in attempting to recruit Carlist volunteers to fight against Nazi Germany. The other, made up of those who remained loyal to Franco, served as tokens of Carlist sentiments within the government, but were monarchists without a monarchical candidate. Still, many chose to collaborate, moderating the more radical Falange from within the unified FET y de las JONS. One of these was the Count of Rodezno, who had been essential in the initial mobilization of Carlist militias and was rewarded with the Ministry of Justice in 1938, the first in a long line of Carlists to hold that cabinet office. Others held local offices, establishing a political monopoly on municipal and Falangist positions in the northern provinces of Navarre and Alava. The Carlist Pretender, then living in France, attempted to interest the British in supporting his claim to the throne and his political solution for Spain: regional and municipal autonomy, close ties with the United Kingdom, a corporative economy, and the dissolution of the Falange. Even his appearance at the British embassy in Paris did not aid his cause, and he remained in exile.10 While Falangist Germanophiles had the most prominent public image in Spain in 1939, there was also a significant minority of pro-Allied Spaniards: businessmen with traditional ties to United Kingdom, members of the monarchist aristocracy who saw in the English system a model for Spain, and members of the upper middle classes who supported the Allies, listened to the BBC, and hoped for a French revival and British victory. Even many Catholics were willing to accept a system closer to that of the British, provided it included a strong, conservative, and Catholic monarchy.11 Among most Spaniards, the overwhelming desire at the end of the civil war was to live in peace and stability and avoid being enmeshed in another 9. Carles Clemente, El Carlismo en la España de Franco, 20–22; Blinkhorn, “Elites in Search of Masses,” 184–85. 10. Carles Clemente, El Carlismo en la España de Franco, 23, 25, 330–36; Blinkhorn, “Elites in Search of Masses,” 183–84; Eugenio Vegas Latapie, La Frustración en la Victoria: Memorias Políticas, 1938–1942, 150; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 325. 11. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 63; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 310–11.


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destructive conflict. Many of the interest groups within the regime, including the church, most monarchists, and important elements of the military, shared this concern. Only the Falange and a determined Germanophile element within the officer corps embraced the possibility of entering the Second World War on the side of the Axis. Beyond this general agreement, however, each of these major groups had radically different views of what shape the Spanish state and government should take. The military was the essential foundation of the regime and provided the most consistent support for the personal rule of Francisco Franco. Essentially created by Franco during the civil war, the new army of the Nationalist state was more loyal to the Caudillo than any other institution. This was true despite the neglect and underfunding of the armed forces that characterized the Second World War. The army underwent significant restructuring in the months following the civil war. In July 1939, Franco ordered Spain divided into eight military regions, each led by a lieutenant general appointed to be “Captain General.” The metropolitan districts were Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Burgos, Valladolid, and La Coruña, with an additional two regions in Spanish Morocco, headquartered in Ceuta and Melilla. The Balearic and Canary Islands continued as autonomous districts, with much smaller forces than on the mainland. In each peninsular military region was a corps of two or three infantry divisions, plus a small mobile reserve of armor and artillery. Franco remained supreme military commander and made sure that the best funding, equipment, and officers went to the forces in Spanish Morocco, the border regions, and near urban centers, to forestall domestic unrest.12 The armed forces were perhaps the only internal Spanish institution capable of overthrowing Franco. As the source of the Caudillo’s initial legitimacy in 1936, when a gathering of Nationalist generals had endorsed Franco as the absolute commander of their forces, the military also presumably had the power to reverse this decision, especially since the initial reason—fighting a civil war —was no longer relevant. More generals in 1939 were monarchist than anything else, but there was no clear consensus, as some were Falangist, Carlist, or just supportive of military government and authoritarianism.13 These political and personal rivalries between generals, and the lack of any figures with charisma, with the possible exception of Blue Division 12. Arriba, July 6, 25, 1939; YA, July 5, 25, 1939; Payne, The Franco Regime, 242–43; Frances Lannon and Paul Preston, eds., Elites and Power in Twentieth-Century Spain, 206. 13. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 39–40.


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commander Muñoz Grandes, made it more difficult for senior officers to promote alternatives to Franco. In this final regard, the military had reason to be satisfied, as it retained emergency powers from 1936 to 1948, able to try civilians in military courts and with a privileged legal and political status. Franco also made sure to give his personal attention to the armed forces, attending military maneuvers and praising the armed services in many of his public speeches.14 Franco moved quickly to silence, demote, or retire those officers who proved difficult. General Gonzalo Quiepo de Llano, who had ensured that Seville rallied early to the Nationalist rebellion in July 1936, was perhaps the most significant threat to Franco within the armed forces. For a few months after the end of the civil war Quiepo de Llano remained commander of the Seville District, even after the reorganization of July 1939, and the press even had to dismiss rumors that Quiepo had been sacked. By August, however, Franco appointed the general to head the Spanish military mission to Italy —a delegation that did not exist.15 During the first year of peace, Franco dramatically reduced the size of the Spanish army, from almost one million at the end of the civil war to 250,000 in early 1940, with most of the remaining soldiers two-year conscripts. Concern about the international situation, Spain’s possible entry into the war, and threats of invasion led him to restore some of these reductions, leaving Spain with almost double the 1940 figure for the remainder of the Second World War. In November 1942, with the Allied landings in North Africa and the German occupation of Vichy France bringing the war closer than ever to Spain’s border, Franco ordered a partial mobilization, bringing the army to more than 750,000. The air force and navy also grew in numbers and in budgets, to 35,000 airmen and 25,000 sailors by 1945, although for fiscal reasons Franco had to restrain attempts by both services to undertake dramatic expansions.16 Even though the armed forces consumed from 35 to 45 percent of all government expenditures, procurement was very limited during the Second World War. One of the reasons the navy, air force, and even army had to limit construction and acquisition of new weapons systems, despite the weakness of the armed forces to cope with any external threat, was that

14. Ibid., 96; Paul Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship: The Military and Politics, 1939–1975,” 205; Arriba, June 15, 1941. 15. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 49–50; YA, July 29, 1939; Arriba, July 22, 1939. 16. Payne, The Franco Regime, 244–45; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 78, 90–91; Arriba, November 18, 1942.


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the vast majority of their budgets, as much as 80 percent, went toward salaries. The bulk of this went to the Spanish army’s “bloated officer corps,” which included both generals over the age of seventy and thousands of provisional lieutenants (alféreces provisionales) commissioned during the civil war and kept on active duty for political reasons, even though their services were no longer needed in a smaller military.17 Additionally, many of the midlevel officers — majors and lieutenant colonels—had been Franco’s infantry cadets when he had been director of the General Military Academy in Zaragoza from 1927 to 1931 and retained loyalty for the former teacher. Their shared sense of duty, ardent nationalism, and willingness to endure sacrifice had brought them through the civil war. In the conflict’s aftermath, the experience also created among many of these officers an ideological self-image as a crusading warrior caste, revering their own suffering during wartime as an indication of their value to the nation, the church, and God.18 Even this ideological unity could not make up for tremendous deficiencies in military materiel and logistics. Thus, the Spanish army entered the period of the Second World War “with a great mass of soldiers poorly fed, clothed and shod, supplied with antiquated weapons and equipment, practically without any automobiles and using obsolete tanks and aircraft.” There were so few tanks in the army that many cavalry officers argued that Spain should ignore the tank and keep cavalry units on horseback. The military, especially the army, suffered from poor equipment and a lack of standardization. Even with the most basic kinds of military equipment, Spain was unable to afford one system. Instead of one type of rifle, which would have improved readiness and made training and logistics easier, the army had to rely on domestic weapons from the SpanishAmerican War, the First World War, and eight other foreign variants. Even at the end of the Second World War, after six years of peace, the army still had ten different kinds of machine guns.19 Despite his extensive battlefield and administrative experience, “the problem of military efficiency never seriously preoccupied General Franco.” Franco even argued that Spanish soldiers could make up through strength 17. Payne, The Franco Regime, 245–46; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 42; Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 698. 18. Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship,” 209–10; Geoffrey Jensen, Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the Ideological Origins of Franco’s Spain, 154–55, 166–70. 19. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 121; Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship,” 206–7.


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of will what they lacked in war materiel. Spain’s international defiance of Allied demands to lessen German ties also had a negative impact on readiness. For example, the British and U.S. oil embargo in early 1944 was so catastrophic that military aircraft and armored vehicles did not have sufficient fuel to participate in the Victory Parade on April 1 commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Nationalist triumph in the Spanish Civil War.20 In some ways, the large officer corps provided political benefits to Franco. Of the twenty-nine thousand alféreces, only three thousand returned to civilian life after the end of the civil war, leaving Franco with a strong and loyal base at the lower rungs of the officer corps. Even if the majority of army careerists above the rank of colonel were monarchists who preferred a restoration, below that rank the officer corps was enthusiastically Francoist, especially the alféreces provisionales, who owed their status and improved prospects to the Caudillo’s wartime leadership. Salaries were low, but officers could supplement their income by selling on the black market, especially food that was available to them in special stores. Housing subsidies and other benefits also made conditions for officers better than for the majority of Spaniards. Officer salaries were also raised on July 1, 1940, by as much as 40 percent.21 Another way Franco held on to the loyalty of the army, despite low salaries for most ranks, was through offering additional remunerative positions. Senior officers could hold salaried positions in the Falange or state, wages that would be in addition to their military income. Accepting these sinecures often meant ending an officer’s chances of being promoted to general, unless the officer was already at flag rank, but in the top-heavy Spanish army promotion to this grade was not a realistic option for most anyway. Colonels and generals often had two salaries, one from the military and one from the state. As many as one third of all senior civil service and security positions were held by military officers. Junior officers without independent means often took jobs in the private sector, taking time away from their military careers to earn enough to provide for their families. In any case, promotions came only on the basis of seniority, not merit, so it made little career sense to be an aggressive and overachieving performer.22

20. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 56, 108–9. 21. José María Gil Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 61; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 48; Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship,” 206–7. 22. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 57; Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship,” 208; Raymond Carr, The Spanish Tragedy: The Civil War in Perspective, 260.


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There were other reasons for the loyalty of the Spanish army to their commander in chief. In a Spain that was suffering so much poverty and hunger, army officers received a guaranteed salary, housing supplements, and access to food unavailable to the general public. These modest conditions were enough to keep most officers content, even if the majority had to hold second jobs to earn a living wage. For good reason, Franco was able to refer to the army and Falange as “the two pillars of the Nation,” by which he meant his regime. This contentedness also continued despite the inactivity of the armed forces during World War II. Aside from the Blue Division, Blue Legion, and Blue Squadron, and the few units involved in fighting Communist guerrillas in northern Spain in 1944–1945, the Spanish military did not gain any battlefield experience, or even hold any major military exercises, during the Second World War.23 The only significant domestic use of the military, against the maquis guerrillas beginning in 1944, also helped to consolidate the regime. Faced with such an obvious threat to national security, the military rallied to Franco. In October 1944 the first insurgents entered Navarre from France. This geographic choice, attempting to seize the Valley of Inclan, was a serious mistake, as it brought the Communists into the Carlist heartland, where they were surrounded by tens of thousands of conservative and Catholic peasants who had been nearly unanimous in their support of the 1936 Nationalist uprising. Still, several thousand rebels infiltrated and remained in the region for up to ten days before being crushed by the army and Guardia Civil. From Navarre, the Communists spread throughout many of the mountainous areas of Spain, carrying out more than three hundred armed attacks on Spanish military, police, and civilian targets. The invasion, which raised fears of another civil war, had the effect of rallying the military around Franco. With the failure of the maquis on the battlefield, the French ended their tolerance for these incursions and closed the Spanish border on March 1, 1945.24 Of the interest groups within the regime, the Bourbon monarchists provided the most serious problems for Franco. For decades leading up to the Civil War, conservative, nationalist, and Catholic forces had rallied around the figure of the throne, and this had not changed during the conflict. It seems safe to say that the largest numbers of volunteers who flocked to Franco’s banner in the summer of 1936 expected their fight to lead to a monarchist restoration in some form. Sharing with other Nationalists 23. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 120–21; YA, August 25, 1942. 24. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 112–14.


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antipathy toward communism and the Republic, they joined Franco’s Catholic crusade with enthusiasm and dedication in 1936. Franco had served the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, was himself a declared monarchist, and even revived the use of the royal flag and march during the civil war. However, he did not move to reestablish the monarchy once the conflict ended, leading to great disappointment among those who believed that the return of a king was imminent. In 1945 he declared Spain a monarchy, although with no indication of when the restoration would occur or what candidate would sit on the throne.25 The most important figure in the monarchist opposition abroad was the Bourbon Pretender, Don Juan de Borbón, son of Alfonso XIII, the king who had left Spain in April 1931 after Republican electoral victories. Alfonso XIII had never abdicated, however, and so in the hearts of his supporters Spain remained a monarchy awaiting the return of the king. In early 1941, shortly before his death, Alfonso finally renounced his rights, bestowing them on his son, Don Juan. One of Don Juan’s chief advisers was José María Gil Robles, the leader of the conservative CEDA Party during the Second Republic. CEDA had been the largest right-wing organization before the Spanish Civil War and had been a key coalition member of several conservative governments. Gil Robles, who had taken refuge in Portugal when the Civil War began, initially supported the uprising and Franco, agreeing to the unification and making pro-rebellion statements to the press. He also gave some of the remaining CEDA funds to help the insurgency. After a brief visit to Franco’s headquarters in May 1938, however, he began to be uncomfortable with the regime and returned to Portugal to support a monarchist restoration.26 The death of Alfonso XIII, at the Grand Hotel in Rome on February 28, 1941, was an important moment for Spanish monarchists, but one effectively controlled by the government to channel sympathy for the late king. Concerned that this emotional event might lead to an upsurge in support for the restoration, Franco declared March 1 as a day of national mourning, with flags flown at half-staff. He also discussed the possibility of the king’s remains being brought back to El Escorial, traditional burial grounds for Spanish monarchs and their families. The government also organized official memorial and funeral services, rather than allow private ceremonies, which might have become too enthusiastically monarchical.27 25. Arriba, July 18, 1945. 26. Donato Barba, La Oposición durante el Franquismo: La Democracia Cristiana, 38, 46. 27. Gil-Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 17, 29.


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Franco personally presided over a memorial service for Alfonso XIII, held at the church of St. Francis in Madrid and attended by almost every figure in the government, Falange, and international diplomatic corps. Alfonso’s body was eventually buried quietly in the royal crypt at El Escorial, joining the pantheon of kings, as well as that of the mausoleum’s most recent addition, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, whose internment had been far more public.28 Franco’s relationship with Alfonso XIII’s son, Don Juan de Borbón, was difficult. Made heir to the throne by his father’s abdication of January 15, 1941, Don Juan officially became the focal point for a restoration upon Alfonso’s death the next month. Given the geopolitical realities of European politics in 1940–1941—dominated by Nazi Germany—some of Don Juan’s advisers recommended that he seek the tacit support of the Third Reich, an alignment made possible by Franco’s difficult relations with the German leadership. Although he would later embrace democratic opposition to Franco, during this period Don Juan made no secret of his disdain for democracy and support for the Nationalist uprising of 1936. Germany did not embrace this idea, however, and these tentative steps did not lead to a Nazi-monarchist understanding.29 Just as Falangists looked to Nazi Germany, Alfonsin monarchists could also count on a potential foreign ally: the United Kingdom. In October 1942, British ambassador Samuel Hoare proposed to Gil Robles, leader of the monarchists in exile in Portugal, that, in case of a German invasion, monarchists could declare a “Free Spain” in Morocco or the Canary Islands. Following the example of Charles DeGaulle, who had vowed to continue the fight against Germany with his Free French movement, the Spaniards declaring this state would be immediately recognized and supported by the United Kingdom. Hoare even promised that Britain would return Gibraltar to Spain if this worked, but Gil and other monarchists remained skeptical. In any case, without a Nazi invasion of Spain, the scheme never developed past these initial conversations. The British did not respond favorably to proposals by Spanish general Antonio Aranda that monarchists should launch a coup without any external reason or assistance.30 There was a significant amount of support for Don Juan among the Spanish aristocracy, upper ranks of the military, and members of the middle

28. Arriba, March 1, 4, 1941. 29. Vegas Latapie, La Frustración en la Victoria, 189–93, 223, 228–29; Dunthorn, “The Spanish Monarchy and Early Francoism,” 50; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 355. 30. Gil-Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 20–22; Ellwood, Franco, 128.


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and upper classes. Many remembered the monarchy fondly and hoped for a restoration. Because there was a high convergence between erstwhile followers of the Franco regime and supporters of a restoration, Franco was concerned. One tactic he used to undermine Don Juan was to accuse him and his supporters of being Freemasons, not just in league with international lodges but also cooperating with the Soviet-led Third International. The idea of a “democratic monarchy” was just a ploy to subjugate Spain to foreign domination, the government argued.31 Don Juan himself made his restoration even more unlikely by his indecisiveness. At some times, he seemed to accept Franco’s rule, while at others he spoke out in complete opposition. This wavering frustrated his supporters in Spain and in exile, and made less likely his return as a king. Still, monarchists inside Spain did their best to bring about this constitutional change. In early 1943, as an Allied victory seemed ever more likely and the survival of the Franco regime in doubt, a group of monarchist deputies in Franco’s appointed Cortes wrote a letter to Franco, asking him to restore the Bourbon house to the throne. Several months later, a majority of his lieutenant generals asked Franco to allow Don Juan to return and rule Spain as a constitutional monarchy. Several others expressed support for the petition without signing. In both cases, Franco refused, and punished many of the signatories with demotions, dismissals, and reprimands, after convincing several key officials to withdraw their signatures.32 The year 1943 was the high point of monarchist activity, and many believed Franco would not survive as leader in the midst of the crisis. By early 1943, even the most ardent Naziphiles had begun losing hope for an Axis victory, as the power of the Allies continued to grow. In the winter of 1942– 1943, pro-Nazi Spanish generals, including Muñoz Grandes, Carlos Asensio, and Juan Yagüe, had promised the Germans that they would urge Franco to enter the war. However, they did demand several preconditions: the Germans had to hold Tunisia, send a new army to North Africa, and begin a new offensive on the Eastern Front. When none of these conditions were fulfilled, enthusiasm for Hitler’s efforts cooled dramatically.33 Perhaps realizing that sentiment for a restoration was rising in his camp and among the Allies, Franco attempted to show that he was still a monarchist. He ordered the revival of funeral masses for the souls of the kings of Spain, traditionally held at El Escorial, and invited “a representation of 31. Arriba, November 5, 1943. 32. Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 716–17; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 393–94. 33. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 93–95; Gil-Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 35.


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the Spanish nobility” to attend and bear witness to this important tradition. A letter to Franco from Don Juan in March 1943 urged the Spanish dictator to move quickly toward establishing a provisional government and restoration, as to do otherwise was exposing Spain to external and internal dangers. After the fall of Mussolini in July 1943, Don Juan sent a telegram to Franco, suggesting that Spain could follow Italy’s example, hinting that a monarchist restoration was the only viable option. Franco’s reply, that Spain was not Italy and that any public declarations by Don Juan would undermine Spanish stability, ended these discussions.34 In June 1943 Franco was surprised by a collective letter, signed by many of the regime’s most important political figures, demanding the restoration of the monarchy. On this document were the signatures of twenty-seven members of Franco’s handpicked Cortes, even including those of some Falangists: a striking rebuke to Franco. This event became known as the “revolt of the Procurators,” after the title held by deputies to the Cortes. Franco made no official reply to this manifesto, although he did dismiss or exile several of the signatories and ordered the arrest of the Marqués de Eliseda, who was responsible for circulating the petition and gathering signatures. Surprisingly, Don Juan made no move or public statement to support this effort and remained in Switzerland rather than moving to Portugal as his supporters asked.35 In September 1943, ten of Spain’s sixteen lieutenant generals — the highest rank in the army—suggested that Franco should reinstall the monarchy and dismantle the Falange and totalitarian dimensions of the government. In private meetings with Franco, however, all the generals recanted, except three—Kindelán, Orgaz, and Ponce. Instead of confronting Franco as a body, the generals had agreed to meet individually with the Caudillo, which allowed him to pressure them by arguing that the international situation was too delicate or by offering plum assignments to those willing to withdraw their signatures.36 Disappointed with Don Juan’s inaction in 1943 and the weakness of the monarchist movement within Spain, the British soon lost interest in promoting a restored Spanish monarchy. As a German attack decreased in probability following Axis defeats in 1943, they began reducing contacts

34. Arriba, February 28, March 2, 1943; Payne, The Franco Regime, 325; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 131–32; Preston, Franco, 495–96. 35. Payne, The Franco Regime, 327; Gil Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 44; Preston, Franco, 492. 36. Payne, The Franco Regime, 329–31; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 105–6.


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with royalists. When Ambassador Hoare passed through Portugal in May 1944, he did not even meet with Gil Robles or other monarchists.37 Another round of monarchist hope surged with the end of the Second World War, however, as a joint U.S.-French note in March 1945 recommended that a provisional government govern Spain. Soon after, on March 19, Don Juan issued the Manifesto of Lausanne, calling for restoration of the monarchy and a constitutional democracy. The pretender declared that totalitarianism was “contrary to the character and tradition of Spain,” and blamed Franco for Spain’s precarious international position. The pretender insisted that the regime should step aside, in favor of an interim governing council and a rapid restoration of the monarchy, this time as a constitutional and democratic system. He also directed his supporters to resign from positions in the Falange and Spanish government. Only a handful complied, however, and there was little demonstration in Spain of a desire to restore the corrupt and unpopular system of the late monarchy, which had ended in 1931 with a disgraced king and exiled royal family. Franco’s vague statements in favor of an eventual monarchist installation were enough to appease most of the pretender’s followers, and Franco remained unmoved by the manifesto. Don Juan’s call did not create the groundswell he expected, and he remained in exile, never to reclaim his throne.38 Monarchist political activity remained peripheral during World War II, but the same was not true of another force in the Nationalist coalition. Officially, politics remained confined to the only legal political party in Spain: the Falange. In April 1939, at the end of the Civil War, the Falange was a massive organization, its 650,000 members making it larger than any other organized body outside of the armed forces, and the largest political movement in Spanish history to that point. Still, it was far from a cohesive party. Created in April 1937, the result of a merger forced by Franco, its complete name, Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas Ofensivas Nacionalsindicalistas (FET y de las JONS) was an indication of its unwieldiness. The uncomfortable union was from three principal sources: the Falange, the Carlists, and the remnants of other conservative Catholic parties. The civil war had devastated the original cadres of the Falange, the camisas viejas who had joined José Antonio when his party was supported

37. Gil Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 87. 38. Dunthorn, “The Spanish Monarchy and Early Francoism,” 55–56; Preston, Franco, 527–29; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 115; Romero Salvadó, Twentieth Century Spain, 143–44.


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in elections by less than 1 percent of the Spanish population. After the civil war began, however, the ranks of the Falange swelled with hundreds of thousands of new members, including many opportunists who had little understanding of the program or history of the party.39 Radical Falangists were most dangerous early during the Second World War, when their identification with Nazi Germany put the regime at risk. At several key points, Hitler and other important Nazi leaders considered using Naziphiles within the Falange and army as a Fifth Column to overthrow or undermine the rule of Francisco Franco. While the Franco regime never became the revolutionary Falangist state dreamed of by José Antonio, it did embrace some of the core values of the party: anticommunism, antiliberalism, economic interventionism, militarism, Catholicism, and imperialism. Various anti-Franco Falangist groups arose during the Second World War, but none achieved much beyond printing clandestine leaflets and being arrested by state authorities.40 Thus while the Falange appeared to be in an unassailably powerful position during the first two or three post–civil war years, the truth was quite different. For example, it had lost its principal leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, along with cofounders Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos—all victims of the civil war. Instead, the newly unified party was in the hands of Franco’s brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Suñer, an attorney. Serrano’s wife was the sister of Franco’s. Serrano had not been Falangist before 1936, instead being a former parliamentary deputy of the CEDA, the largest conservative Catholic party during the Spanish Republic. Serrano exercised increasing influence over the Caudillo in regards to the Falange during the civil war, and this importance continued after the end of the conflict. From 1938 to 1942, he was the strongest political figure in the regime next to Franco. Serrano also recruited many former CEDA activists to the FET y de las JONS, so many that Falangists complained these new members were dominating the majority of important positions within the government and party.41 Serrano’s vision was to transform the FET y de las JONS into an Italianstyle fascist party, and so during the first three years after the civil war he 39. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 315; Vegas Latapie, La Frustración en la Victoria, 152. 40. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 347–48, 371, 387; Joan Maria Thomàs, La Falange de Franco: El Proyecto Fascista del Régimen, 215–16; Wayne H. Bowen, “Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Visions of a New Order,” 194–97, 252–53. 41. Joan Maria Thomàs and Adriano Gómez Molina, Ramón Serrano Suñer, 111, 198, 224, 233, 244–46; Manuel Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento (1936–1952), 170, 188–89.


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urged it in this direction. One new element to Spanish political life after the end of the civil war was the frequent raising of the fascist salute and singing of the Falangist anthem, “Cara al Sol,” at every public gathering, including not just political meetings but also sporting events, movie showings, and other spectacles. At movies, the audience had to rise and hail the portrait of Franco that always ran at the beginning of the film, something that even bothered some Falangists, tired of so much singing and saluting.42 Another major innovation of Serrano was the mass rally at important times throughout the year, such as on the anniversaries of the foundation of the Falange, the death of José Antonio, and the Nationalist rebellion. Serrano and other Falangist leaders also carefully stage-managed large crowds to parade, greet, and celebrate Franco during his frequent visits to the provinces. The press hailed Franco as embodying “the total sovereign power of Spain.” The public spectacles were not limited to Franco; the Falange also organized multitudes to meet workers and soldiers leaving to aid Nazi Germany, as well as returning Blue Division and Squadron veterans. On his rare trips around Spain, Serrano also enjoyed the forced adulation of corralled crowds, summoned by the authorities to cheer his appearances and speeches.43 Serrano selected lieutenants with little regard for their political credentials from before the civil war. Since he himself was not a camisa vieja, he did not insist on this characteristic among his assistants. One of his most important supporters, radio and propaganda subsecretary chief Antonio Tovar Llorente, was rumored to have been a Socialist before the civil war. Tovar, an expert in ancient languages, was in the Third Reich studying when the civil war began and converted to the Nationalist cause through his enthusiasm for Nazi Germany.44 Another important element of Falangist ideology was the cult of their martyred founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, executed by Republican forces on November 20, 1936, in the coastal city of Alicante. The most dramatic example of this veneration, which disturbed the Catholic Church and monarchists alike, was the transfer of his remains from Alicante to El Escorial, the palace of Phillip II near Madrid, which held the bodies of the kings of Spain. Beginning on November 19, 1939, Falangist faithful

42. Vegas Latapie, La Frustración en la Victoria, 127. 43. YA, October 31, 1939, March 29, April 2, July 19, 1940, January 29, February 1, April 2, May 26, August 25, 1942; Arriba, July 19, 1939, April 2, 21, 23, 1940, January 28, April 2, 1942. 44. Arriba, December 14, 20, 29, 1940.


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carried José Antonio’s exhumed coffin on their shoulders across Spain to El Escorial. The transfer was the lead story every day in late November, with detailed accounts of those who had been honored to be pallbearers. Once in Madrid, after ten days and nights of travel, José Antonio’s body was paraded through the streets of the capital to large crowds, until its final internment in El Escorial on December 1.45 Every ten kilometers there had been a change of pallbearers, with representatives from every province and region. While passing through towns and cities, church bells rang in honor of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the army fired artillery in salute, and torches lit the way at night. At El Escorial, Franco and the entire leadership of the government and Falange awaited, along with representatives of the church, armed forces, and local community. A similar ceremony accompanied the transfer of the remains of Onésimo Redondo, one of the early leaders of the Falange, to Valladolid in mid-June 1941, although without the continuous media attention conferred on the moving of José Antonio’s body.46 During 1939, the basic structure of the Falange took shape. At the top was the Jefe Nacional, Francisco Franco. Below him were two officials, the secretary general and the president of the Junta Política. The Junta was a small body, initially made up of twenty members and planned as the highest consultive body within the Falange, but like other Francoist organizations ostensibly created to legislate, it met rarely and usually only to approve prior decisions of Serrano or Franco. Dominated by Serrano and his lieutenants, it never functioned as a serious deliberative body. After the dismissal of Serrano in September 1942, Franco also assumed the presidency of the Junta, thus ensuring that it would stay completely moribund.47 Below this organ was the Consejo Nacional, also an appointed body, which in theory would serve as the broad deliberative body of the regime, representing the most important elements of the coalition. The first Consejo, referred to as the “National Council of the Peace,” included just over ninety members, with representation from all the major interest groups within the regime: Falangists, military officers, monarchists, and conservative leaders. Among the members were only two women, Pilar Primo de

45. Ibid., November 11, 19, 29, December 1, 1939. 46. Ibid., June 14, 1941; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 155–57; Preston, Franco, 346–47. 47. Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 127–28; YA, October 26, 1939, September 4, 1942; Arriba, October 26, 1939.


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Rivera and Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, an indication of the Francoist conception of a nearly exclusive masculine leadership.48 Serrano and Franco organized the Falange itself into National Delegations, with the leaders of each responsible for political action within their sphere. By the end of the civil war the party had more than a dozen of these agencies, also called National Services, often occupied by revolutionary Falangists. The most prominent delegations were Sindicatos (Syndicates), Auxilio Social (Social Aid), Transportes y Comunicaciones, Deportes (Sports), Falange Exterior, Información y Investigación, Justicia y Derecho (Justice and Law), Ex-cautivos (former captives), Ex-combatientes (veterans), Provincias, Sanidad (Health), Frente de Juventudes (Youth Front), Sección Femenina (Women’s Section), Tesorería y Administración (Treasury and Administration), Prensa (Press), Propaganda, Espectáculos (Public Performances), and Radio. Although ostensibly given broad authority, many of the delegations clashed with their counterparts in the state ministries and organizations. Each province also had a Falangist chief, a position later merged with that of civil governor.49 The first peacetime secretary general of the Falange was General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, an unexpected choice. While he was considered a general sympathetic to the Falange and was fiercely antimonarchist, he had no political experience, and he had not been a supporter of the party before the civil war. During the conflict, he had been a field commander and had won awards for courage. By all accounts, he was appointed to improve the organization and morale of the party, while preventing it from becoming too radical. However, Muñoz Grandes was in an uncomfortable position, with Serrano above him as president of the Junta Política and Pedro Gamero del Castillo, a camisa nueva (New Shirt, or Falangist who joined after the civil war began), as vice secretary of the party. As secretary general, Muñoz issued orders prohibiting goose-stepping and fought against black market activities by members of the party. With his military and political importance, he was listed third in the first Consejo Nacional, after only Pilar Primo de Rivera and Ramón Serrano.50 One of Muñoz Grandes’s most important programs, so far neglected by historians, was an effort to promote reconciliation between Nationalists and their civil war enemies of the Popular Front. Unique among Francoist

48. Joan Maria Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 184–89; Arriba, September 13, 1939. 49. Ricardo Chueca, El Fascismo en los Comienzos del Regimen de Franco, 229, 238–64. 50. Vadillo, Muñoz Grandes, 103–4; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 44; YA, August 10, 1939; Arriba, August 10, 1939.


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ministers, he insisted that the Nationalists and their Republican enemies could overcome the hatred of that bitter conflict, rebuilding Spain together for the good of the nation. Muñoz Grandes suggested that Falangists should make every effort to assist returning Reds in their attempts to find employment and restore normalcy to their lives: “For those combatants who did not commit blood crimes, who served as conscripts in the ranks of the Red army, hounded by Marxist leaders, the Caudillo offers pardon, exempting them not only from the physical punishment of a sentence, but also from the spiritual punishment of feeling themselves unwanted and persecuted.” In regards to these “lost sheep,” he encouraged his fellow party members to practice the nobility and honor for which Spain was famous. However, former Republicans were far more likely to be investigated, tried, and punished for their alleged crimes than reintegrated into the national community. Frustrated in his efforts, General Muñoz resigned his position in March 1940, returning to active army service.51 At the same time, Franco demonstrated his desire to prevent any rivals from establishing firm power bases. For this reason, there was no unity of command in the military. In August 1939 the Ministry of National Defense, created in January 1938 to improve joint operations, was replaced by three separate ministries for each service. This was “largely an exercise in divide and rule,” because only Franco, as the commander in chief, could arbitrate between the services and balance the institutional demands of the army, navy, and air force.52 For example, in the August 1939 cabinet reshuffle, he dismissed the monarchist general Alfredo Kindelán, the commander of the Spanish air forces during the civil war. Without warning or any expression of gratitude for his creation of Franco’s air force from nothing, Kindelán was removed from office and sent to the Balearic Islands. Despite his proven expertise in aviation, the general was perhaps becoming too popular and expert in his position for Franco’s comfort. The next year, however, Franco promoted Kindelán to lieutenant general and gave him command over the Barcelona Military District, one of the most prestigious in Spain.53 In Kindelán’s place as minister of the air force, Franco appointed the Naziphile general Juan Yagüe Blanco, an excellent battlefield commander who had played a key role in the uprising of July 1936 and led a column of Moroccan soldiers for much of the civil war. Unlike Kindelán, however, 51. Arriba, September 12, 1939, March 16, 1940; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 229–30. 52. Preston, “Decay, Division, and the Defence of Dictatorship,” 205. 53. Alfredo Kindelán, La Verdad de Mis Relaciones con Franco, 129.


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he had absolutely no experience with aircraft, aerospace, or managing a large bureaucracy. One virtue of Yagüe’s, however, was that his Falangist credentials—he was perhaps the general most sympathetic to calls for revolution—convinced radical Naziphiles that they had an ally in the cabinet. Rather than giving him command of a military district or division, where he might have become a focal point for opposition, Franco appointed him to the cabinet in the hopes of keeping him busy with the administrative minutiae of starting a new ministry. As these cases illustrated, whenever Franco feared that one of his officers was becoming a potential threat, the dictator was ready with demotions, awards, and promotions to bring him under control.54 In the summer and fall of 1940 Spain came closest to entering the war, with the Falange and military in ascendancy over more moderate monarchists, the church, and business interests. Uncertainty pervaded the mood of Spain during those months, with Spain’s edging closer to war coinciding with the heights of the black market and corruption. Most of the Falange and military believed that a Nazi victory was imminent, and that Spain needed to affiliate quickly with the Axis to take its proper share of the spoils of war.55 In the summer of 1940, Franco was still hesitant to embrace belligerency on the side of the Axis, barring financial and military guarantees from Hitler and Mussolini. When Air Force Minister Yagüe proposed at a cabinet meeting that Spain should immediately enter the war on the side of Germany, Franco told him to keep quiet and dismissed him from office shortly thereafter, even though this was not far from Franco’s own thinking on the subject. The Caudillo also fired General López Pinto, the captain general of the frontier Sixth Military District, after he allowed excessive HispanoGerman fraternization at the border.56 One of the most critical internal confrontations was the “May Crisis” of 1941, a conflict begun by Falangists, who feared their revolution was being delayed indefinitely. The crisis began with complaints to Franco by Falangists about the slow pace of social change. Some of the early signals of these tensions were editorials in Arriba, the official newspaper of the Falange, calling for a reawakened revolutionary spirit, a willingness to be 54. Payne, The Franco Regime, 235; Preston, Franco, 339–40; Gil Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 62. 55. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 64–65; Payne, The Franco Regime, 266–67. 56. Antonio Marquina Barrio, La Diplomacia Vaticana y la España de Franco, 269–70; Payne, The Franco Regime, 260–61; Preston, Franco, 365.


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bold, violent, and revolutionary, even at the risk of offending people: a call to arms for frustrated Falangists. Propagandists Antonio Tovar and Dionisio Ridruejo, veterans’ leader José Antonio Girón, Madrid’s Falange chief Miguel Primo de Rivera, and Women’s Section leader Pilar Primo de Rivera also objected to the lack of true Falangists in the government, which they saw as dominated by traditional conservative members of the Spanish elite. In some areas of Spain, there were even street fights between Falangists and soldiers.57 Falangist goals included creating a new super-ministry of National Economy, to be put under the control of someone who shared their revolutionary ideals, as well as elevating Serrano to the presidency of the government. Franco was to remain as head of state, but with reduced powers. The Falangists also advocated Spain’s entry into the Second World War on the side of the Axis and the immediate implementation of the most radical goals of the party.58 The petitioners, many of whom resigned their offices in protest in May 1941, also denounced the appointment of Army Colonel Valentín Galarza Morente, known for his monarchist and anti-Falangist sentiments, as minister of Interior. Galarza had begun to dismiss Falangists from positions in the provinces and in the ministry, a move seen as a threat by the party. Falangists saw the cabinet position of Interior, with control over internal security and censorship, as an office that had to remain in their hands. Serrano had held the post until taking over the Foreign Ministry and continued to exercise indirect control over it. Franco responded to the crisis by appointing Miguel Primo de Rivera and Girón to the cabinet, along with Arrese, and also by convincing Pilar Primo de Rivera to reclaim the leadership of the Women’s Section. The result of the crisis was that there were more Falangists in the government, but they were more accommodating leaders than radicals such as Ridruejo and Tovar, who left public office permanently, along with several provincial governors and highranking Falangists who had supported the arguments of the dissidents.59 While Franco appeased some Falangists, he insisted that Galarza remain as minister of Interior, as reversal might seem a reflection of weakness. He also reserved all three military branches, as well as control over Spain’s security forces, for monarchists or conservatives rather than the Falange.

57. Arriba, April 22, 1941; Girón de Velasco, Si la Memoria no me Falla, 76; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 356–61. 58. Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 172–75. 59. Preston, Franco, 432–35; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 98–100.


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The results of the May Crisis were the political weakening of Serrano Suñer, who was no longer the only conduit between Franco and the Falange, and the strengthening of the military and Francoist loyalists at all levels. In one accommodation to Falangist sentiments, censorship and control of the press came under the control of a new Vice Secretariat of Press and Propaganda within the party, stripping Galarza of one of his ministry’s most important powers.60 While no word of these tumults initially reached the press, rumors were so rampant that even Arriba had to say something to the uneasy public. The editorial published was hardly reassuring: For something more than a week Spaniards have had the suspicion that they were on the verge of what in another time would have been called “a public event.” Here, in this regime, there is no crisis. There is—at the most—phases in the march, in the movement. But there are no possibilities of changing direction. . . . The Falange will continue marching one step at a time toward the goal of full revolution. On the road there will be halts, interferences, reinforcements, and accelerations, but never deviations. Day by day—as yesterday and tomorrow—the Caudillo delivers to the Falange and Spain decisions that, following in a declared and wellknown pattern, do not involve mysteries or admit interpretations.61

Such confusing statements might have led even supporters of the regime to believe that the regime actually was in a crisis. Despite the increase in Falangist cabinet members, many party activists remained disappointed by the pace of social change under Franco. The youth movement, in particular, was filled with discontented Falangists who had ceased to believe that a revolution was on the horizon. While 1939 had seen the assimilation of Catholic youth organizations into the Falange, there was little translation of this into a genuine mass movement. Despite some initial successes in organizing the Frente de Juventudes (FJ— Youth Front) and Sindicato Española Universitario (SEU—Spanish University Syndicate), by early 1941 many young party leaders were disillusioned with Franco and the state. This unhappiness might account for the significant numbers who volunteered to join the Blue Division in June and July 1941, hoping to return as heroes with increased status. Among

60. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 70; Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 126–29; Ellwood, Franco, 129–30; YA, May 18, 20, 1941; Arriba, December 17, 21, 1940, May 6, 11, 18, 21–23, 30, 1941; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 360–61. 61. Arriba, May 20, 1941.


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those who hoped to revive their revolutionary prospects through enlistment were Enrique Sotomayor Gippini, former secretary general of the SEU, and SEU national chief José Miguel Guitarte, the former of whom died on the Eastern Front. Guitarte died just over a year after his return from the Blue Division, his fragile health shattered by combat.62 Another change was the increasing importance of José Luis de Arrese, an architect who claimed to be camisa vieja— although just barely, as he had joined the Falange in February 1936—appointed in May 1941 to be secretary general of the Falange. Arrese was a clever selection by Franco because unlike some previous party leaders who had genuinely wanted to implement the Falangist revolution, the new secretary general placed his personal loyalty to Franco above all else. For the new secretary general, the idea of the New State was of an “ordered community,” with a single party, dedication to God, and opposition to liberalism and communism. With his Jesuit education and Carlist family, the thirty-six-year-old Arrese was one of the most ardently Catholic of the Falangist leaders, and he reshaped Spanish Falangism in a more pro-clerical direction. Despite the dubiousness of his claim to being a camisa vieja, the most important judgment on him, from Franco, was favorable. Arrese soon became one of Franco’s favorites, spending vacations with the Caudillo’s family and offering advice in areas outside his official provenance. Arrese also managed the expansion of the FET to its largest size, almost one million members in 1941.63 Arrese’s political experience was thin before his appointment to be secretary general. He had not been much involved with the Falange before the civil war and had initially opposed the Unification of 1937, even receiving a two-year prison sentence—subsequently commuted—for resisting Franco. In December 1939 a rehabilitated Arrese, now fiercely loyal to Franco, became the civil governor of Málaga, an impoverished and hungry southern province, not exactly at the center of politics or economic life. Arrese moved rapidly as governor to fight against the black market, imposing fines for violating rationing, and organized voluntary donations of Christmas toys and gifts for local children. By January 1940 Arrese had resolved food shortages, with the arrival of two ships from Morocco laden 62. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 321–23; Juan Sáez Marín, El Frente de Juventudes, 59–66; YA, September 24, 1939, January 5, 1940; Arriba, July 26, August 13, 22, September 26, October 24, 28, 1939, February 22, December 7, 1940, January 4, 1941, January 1, July 10, 1942, October 7, 9, November 23, 24, 1943. 63. Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 16, 18, 19, 23, 47, 60, 79, 153– 54; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 159–60; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 370.


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with seven thousand tons of wheat, and also had moved to revive the beachfront boardwalk, important for local tourism. At their first meeting in spring 1941, Arrese impressed Franco so much that the dictator appointed him secretary general, filling a position vacant since March 1940.64 Upon taking over as party leader, Arrese moved to sideline Serrano as quickly as possible. One of Arrese’s most innovative ideas was the introduction of the medal of the “Vieja Guardia” (Old Guard) for those who had been members of the Falange or other precursor organizations, such as the Carlist movement, before the civil war. This award conveyed status and prestige on the recipients, granting them legitimacy within the party and often better access to appointments and patronage. While Arrese qualified, Serrano and most of the foreign minister’s closest collaborators had only joined the party during the civil war.65 The summer of 1942 saw another major political crisis. On August 16, Carlists gathered at the basilica of the Virgin of Begoña in Bilbao to commemorate their civil war dead. Among the five thousand in attendance at the church in the Basque country was army chief General José Enrique Varela. Several Falangists outside the church, after a confrontation with the Carlists, threw grenades at the crowd, injuring several dozen worshipers. Varela immediately accused the Falange of attacking the army, sent telegrams to the commanders of Spain’s military districts, ordered the guilty to be executed, and demanded that Franco punish the party. Franco refused to do so, but did use the crisis to reorganize his cabinet once again. Among the surprises were the dismissals of Varela, who had been too aggressive in his anti-Falangism, and Franco’s brother-in-law Serrano Suñer, identified with the Naziphile faction of the party and therefore an increasing political liability. Interior Minister Galarza, who had been the focal point of the May Crisis, also lost his position, as one who had agreed with Varela that the Falange needed to be punished.66 Much as it had during the May Crisis, the Spanish press attempted to downplay the Begoña incident, even in an editorial titled “Changing of the Guard”: It is unnecessary to repeat again that the substitutions of some persons in Government or party offices does not produce nor will it produce the 64. Arriba, December 8, 1939; Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 77, 82–83, 86–89, 92, 94–95, 104–5. 65. Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 149–50; Arriba, March 12, 1942. 66. Payne, The Franco Regime, 306–9; Preston, Franco, 466–68; Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 720; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 378–79; Arriba, August 19, 25, September 4, December 9, 1942.


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Spain during World War II least variation in domestic or international politics. It would be another thing entirely to deny the incidental meaning of the changing names of men, which does not change the permanent nature and the service of the Totalitarian State. The experience has been repeated frequently in nations of a similar structure and with the same nature. In reality, all of this obeys vital laws, common to all healthy organisms, subject to wear and tear and fatigue, but suitable for the quick reestablishment of normal forces.67

The army, in particular, was delighted at the sacking of Serrano, and this change quieted much of the grumbling among senior officers through the rest of 1942 and into 1943.68 Bad feelings remained between the Falange and Carlists, however, and so in one measure to calm the conflict, Franco delayed the opening of universities until November 1 to avoid confrontations between rival student groups. To prevent more armed confrontations and appease the army, Franco also dissolved the Falangist militia. The result of the Begoña affair was to convince the army and the Falange that they could not exercise independently of Franco. He was the final arbiter of Spain’s destiny, and the master of its internal politics, for good or ill.69 Arrese was one of the strongest advocates of a closer relationship with Nazi Germany, even after Franco had decided against war. In late 1942, he formed part of a group of ministers and generals who urged Franco to ally with the Axis. Demonstrating his personal alignment, in January 1943 Arrese visited Nazi Germany, despite the protests of Foreign Minister Jordana, who was trying to improve relations with the Allies. Even after assurances by Franco that this was a mission of the Falange and not the Spanish government, Jordana was still upset at the trip and wanted to make sure the escort was not full of interventionist Falangists who might offend Allied opinion. While the visit did happen, on Franco’s orders Arrese restrained his comments, making vague statements about the evils of communism and the tragedy of the war, but avoiding making binding commitments. Arrese presented Hitler with a formal letter from Franco, asking for sales of military equipment and expressing Spain’s best wishes in the fight against communism, but the secretary general refused to be drawn into discussions of a possible Spanish entry into the war. From this 67. Arriba, September 4, 1942. 68. Preston, Franco, 470. 69. Gil-Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 19; Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 86–87.


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point on, “the Germans gave up all hope of stimulating any domestic political change or overtly altering Spanish policy.”70 Upon his return from the Third Reich, which coincided with the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, Arrese became more circumspect in his enthusiasm for the New Order. While still warning that the defeat of Germany would be “the defeat of Europe,” his new agenda was to argue against communism, rather than endorsing every aspect of Hitler’s policies. Others, however, were less timid in their continued support for Hitler’s movement. For example, Agustín Aznar, a veteran of the Blue Division and the Falangist National Delegate for Health, wrote in the fall of 1943 of his nostalgia for a good fight: “The front line of the Falange before the war was a bulwark of blue shirts against the advance of communism; later, in Russia, it continued in its clean national and anticommunist line, and perhaps the Caudillo Franco, in the days when the threat of war rises and falls, will again concede to his ‘blue shirts’ the honor of dying to defend a civilization menaced by the fierce Asiatic enemy.”71 Germany’s defeats were also those of the Falange, which had so identified with the Third Reich and Fascist Italy that they could not help but be eclipsed toward the end of the Second World War. The balance of power in early 1943 shifted away from those who had identified with the New Order, and toward those who had advocated neutral or even pro-Allied policies. Accompanying the change at the international level was a power shift at home, with pro-Nazi officials removed or demoted in the Falange and army, replaced by less controversial appointments. Only Franco remained relatively unaffected by these power changes.72 The year 1943 saw many major changes in the image of the Franco regime, although not any alterations in the absolute power exercised by the Caudillo. In May 1943, for example, the Falangist press abandoned using the term “totalitarian” as a descriptor for the state, replacing it with “unitary.” Beginning in December 1943, the press ceased referring to the “Falange,” replacing it with the more innocuous-sounding “Movement,” and began to highlight Spain’s neutrality in World War II. To buttress this more moderate image, in March 1945 José Luis de Arrese, secretary general of the “Movement,” published a book, “The Totalitarian State in

70. Arriba, January 16–17, 19–22, 24, 27–29, 1943; Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 160–61, 164–78; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 385–86. 71. Arriba, February 10, October 29, 1943. 72. Cardona, Franco y Sus Generales, 99; Arriba, March 17, 1943.


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the Thought of José Antonio,” arguing that the Falangist founder had never endorsed totalitarianism. While Franco embraced this vision, Arrese had been an outspoken advocate of the New Order and was dismissed shortly after the end of the war.73 By late 1943, Franco was in a much stronger position than in previous years. All of the military conspiracies had failed or been abandoned, the food situation had improved, and the Iberian Bloc provided legitimacy and support from Portugal. Even the monarchist surge of earlier in the year had lost inertia. The Caudillo, while a general supporter of the monarchy, saw a monarchist restoration only as a last resort. However, he would not consider this option, whether of the Alfonsine or Carlist lines, as long as he had the support of the army and the conservative middle classes and the acquiescence of the British.74 Franco also adopted a wide range of cosmetic domestic reforms, trying to moderate the external appearance of the regime. In 1943 he had reconstituted the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, albeit with an entirely appointive membership. Franco allocated the 424 seats to a combination of Falangist leaders, mayors, syndical chiefs, all cabinet ministers, and the directors of Spain’s universities. Despite its apparent broad representation, the body only had the ability to recommend changes to proposed laws and decrees, not to initiate legislation itself. Franco even refused to call the delegates “deputies,” preferring the medieval term “procuradores.” Editorials after D-Day began denouncing the fascist/antifascist conflict as an “anachronistic polemic,” suggesting that the real struggle was between “culture and barbarism,” with the Soviet Union representing barbarism and the West, culture.75 In November 1944, Franco declared in an interview with United Press that Spain’s political system was not anathema to the United States, but in fact was already a Catholic “organic democracy.” Spanish officials argued that the nation had never been anything other than a neutral bystander to the Second World War, and that its Catholic nature had made it incompatible with the totalitarianism of the Axis. Foreign Minister Lequerica even declared that “the internal regime of Spain is not relevant to its foreign policy,” attempting to argue that the totalitarian and pro-Axis origins of the Spanish government no longer mattered. In April 1945,

73. Álvaro de Diego, José Luis Arrese o la Falange de Franco, 184, 202–4, 221. 74. Gil-Robles, La Monarquía por la Que Yo Luché, 26–27. 75. Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 266; Payne, The Franco Regime, 323–24; Arriba, March 17, 1943, July 20, 1944.


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commemorating the sixth anniversary of the Nationalist uprising, the Spanish press editorialized that the rebellion had been an armed plebiscite, thus making Franco the democratic choice of the Spanish people.76 Summer 1945 saw even more superficial changes to the Spanish political system. Franco introduced a new constitution, declared that Spain was a monarchy —albeit without a monarch—and appointed a new cabinet dominated by lay Catholic leaders, technocrats, and nonthreatening conservatives, “a new period on the road to the spiritual and material restoration of our Patria.” With the exception of Labor Minister Girón, Falangist ministers lost their positions, as did Secretary General Arrese. The Falange also lost control over censorship and the press, powers transferred to the Ministry of National Education. Franco even announced municipal and syndical elections, although with suffrage limited to male heads of households. This was part of a general effort to emphasize the conservative Catholic aspects of the regime, while denying or minimizing the semi-fascist elements of Francoism.77 With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Franco ordered celebrations, and for the Spanish flag to remain hoisted for three days to commemorate the event. Fearing that the Allies would now turn their attention to Spain, the press also reprinted 1942 and 1944 letters from Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, declaring that Spain had nothing to fear from the United Nations, that the Allies would respect its territory and colonies, and that both leaders considered it an essential partner in promoting peace and security in Europe. The new Spanish foreign minister, Alberto Martín Artajo, even declared that Spain’s “system of government is on the road to new forms of popular representation and political liberty,” an exaggeration at best.78 This late conversion to pro-Americanism and democratic claims came far too late, and was so obviously self-serving that it had little good effect on Spaniards or the intended foreign audiences, British and American public opinion and political leaders. With the fundamental power of the state still in the hands of Franco, his efforts to camouflage Spain’s authoritarian system as a democratic or representative government failed, and the Spanish people remained diplomatically, economically, and politically isolated from the rest of Europe for years after the end of the Second World War.

76. Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 265; Payne, The Franco Regime, 324; Arriba, July 22, 1945; YA, April 3, 1945. 77. Arriba, July 14, 18, 20–22. 28–29, August 28, 1945. 78. Ibid., August 15, 18, 21, 23, 1945.


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Chapter 4 The Economy

T

he civil war devastated the Spanish economy, but did not cripple it. Indeed, Spain’s economic infrastructure in 1939 was in better shape than those of Italy, Greece, or Yugoslavia —the three most comparable European states—immediately after World War II. Despite this relative advantage, Spain’s economy took much longer to recover its pre-1936 levels. In fact, it was not until the mid-1950s that incomes and living standards surpassed the pre–civil war period. It was not, therefore, the destructiveness of the civil war alone that accounted for Spain’s ongoing underperformance. Instead, it was the political and economic decisions of the Franco regime that served as the key limiting factor preventing Spanish economic revival during the Second World War.1 Spain in 1939 faced significant economic choices. Before the Spanish Civil War, the nation had been integrated into global markets, although it remained primarily an agricultural producer. British, French, German, U.S., and other investors had been involved in the Spanish economy. The Great Depression and, most especially, the civil war had reduced and narrowed Spanish trade. Once the war ended, however, Franco chose to maintain Spain’s relative isolation from international markets, embracing instead the political and economic practice of “autarky,” a policy of decreasing 1. Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 15; Sima Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 1940–93, 18–19; José Luis García Delgado, “Estancamiento Industrial e Intervencionismo Económico durante el Primer Franquismo,” 188–91.

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reliance on foreign markets through import substitution, promotion of domestic industries, and protectionism. One of the key features of the system was the end of economic liberty and anything resembling a free market. As early as 1937–1938, the state became the principal actor in the economy.2 Franco’s early dedication to autarky reflected both the dictator’s enthusiasm for Mussolinian nationalist ideology and the realities of the post– Civil War economy considerably weakened by the Great Depression and by the human and non-human losses inflicted on Spain by the long and cruel civil war. Warfare had seriously damaged Spain’s industrial installations and the country’s infrastructure. It crippled the country’s agriculture and left Spain with insufficient exchange reserves. Entrepreneurs and skilled workers who had supported the Republic fled Spain and deprived its economy of significant human resources.3

Despite these serious problems, Spain’s stagnation resulted more from Franco’s “economic ineptitude,” which led to bad decisions and even worse results.4 The weakness of the Spanish economy and the starvation seen until the late 1940s was not the inevitable result of a civil war, but instead the product of the regime’s poor decisions, economic ignorance, corruption, and ideological dedication to inefficient systems. Franco did not understand or believe in the market economy and harbored serious distrust of foreign investment, believing it impinged on Spanish sovereignty. Despite the overwhelming support, including financial backing, that entrepreneurs provided to Franco and the Nationalists during the civil war, this assistance did not translate during the Second World War into a favorable financial climate or measures that might have produced economic growth, significant private investment, or the positive environment for business hoped for by Spain’s small and large capitalists. Unwilling to adopt the social revolution of the Falange or return to the limited corporatism of the 1920s, and fundamentally uninterested in economics, Franco attempted halfhearted autarky, causing long-term and serious damage to Spain, not to mention indirectly contributing to widespread starvation, unemployment, and artificial living standards.

2. Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco, Las Alas del Ave Fénix: La Política Agraria del Primer Franquismo (1936–1959), 7, 8, 12–13. 3. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 1–2. 4. Gabriel Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 237.


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World War II and the immediate consequences of its outcome strengthened General Franco’s commitment to autarky and restricted opportunities for alternative approaches. The war seriously reduced Spanish imports of foodstuffs, raw materials, and energy products and limited Spanish exports. Following the end of the war, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States imposed on Spain a partial economic embargo, which the newly established United Nations supported. Spain not only was deprived of any Marshall Plan aid, which it had hoped to receive, but also saw its foreign trade crippled. Despite modest economic reforms, such as lifting price controls on some products, international political concerns were of higher importance to the United Nations than any cosmetic changes to Spain’s economy. It was not until the early 1950s that Spain started obtaining foreign economic assistance, largely from the United States. In September 1953 the United States and Spain signed the Pact of Madrid, extending aid in exchange for military bases, and in December 1955 the United Nations admitted Spain.5 As early as the civil war, Franco had made public his preference for autarky and corporatism. His 1938 Fuero del Trabajo (Work Law) proclaimed that the Nationalist state would establish “an economic system equidistant from liberal capitalism and Marxist materialism.” This path, one of National Syndicalism, was a totalitarian ideal inspired by the Nazi and Fascist examples, but one that contained a strong preference for employers and managers as those empowered to make most significant economic decisions, after regulation by government authorities. The working class was in all ways subordinated to management.6 Superficially, these economic decisions appealed to many businessmen, but in practice the regime subordinated and smothered the business community with regulations, taxes, political supervision, and other restrictions. The tumult of the Spanish Republic, as well as the revolutionary rhetoric and practices of the Socialists, Communists, and other Popular Front parties drove bankers, industrialists, shopkeepers, and other entrepreneurs into the arms of Franco, but he did not return the embrace. While the Nationalist regime did protect private property, crush the unions, and reverse the Popular Front’s seizures of land and enterprises, it did not 5. Fernando Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–57, 122, 131; Joseph Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 20, 36, 41; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 21, 38–41; Payne, The Franco Regime, 247–48. 6. Miguel A. Aparicio Pérez, “Aspectos Politicos del Sindicalismo Español de Posguerra,” 59–61.


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return to the business-friendly environment of the 1920s, nor inspire much hope for a brighter economic future for Spain. Additionally, private business organizations lost the autonomy they had enjoyed under the Republic and even under the dictatorship of the 1920s, stripping entrepreneurs of corporate institutions, other than official Sindicatos of worker, managers, and owners.7 Franco’s post–civil war economic policies, modeled after those of Germany and Italy, included controlled bilateral trade, import restrictions, limits on foreign investment and profit repatriation, centralized distribution of raw materials, obligatory enrollment of workers in state-administered syndicates, and the promotion of certain industries considered “in the national interest” through lowered taxes, preferential contracts, and priority access to materials and labor. While the difficulties of the Second World War contributed to Spain’s economic problems, they were not the root cause. Rather, it was Franco’s unwillingness to take advantage of opportunities in international markets, or to allow increased foreign investment, that magnified Spain’s poverty. The government’s main concern was to increase economic independence rather than improve standards of living. The expansion of the public sector, to 20 percent of the total economy, and the decline in consumption as a percentage of national expenditure from 78.7 percent in 1935 to 64 percent in 1943 were examples of the priorities of the regime.8 In economic matters, Franco adopted Hitler’s ideas about autarky, or self-reliance. This doctrine advocated reducing imports and creating domestic substitutes through promoting synthetic materials, alternative products, and industry creation. The main argument behind this was one of self-defense: nations that had to rely on overseas markets were vulnerable. For example, Germany had no natural rubber production, since this was a tropical product, so it tried to create artificial rubber, with some success. Spain had no such success. It also did not have the financial means of Germany, or its ability to bring other states under its control. While Spain did have a small colonial empire, most of its territory was desert or jungle, and the Spanish army was not strong enough to begin a war of conquest.9 7. Mercedes Cabrera and Fernando del Rey, “Spanish Entrepreneurs in the Era of Fascism: From the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship to the Franco Dictatorship, 1923–1945,” 51–53. 8. Jordi Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 70–71; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 18, 43; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 192; Richards, A Time of Silence, 98–99. 9. Christian Leitz, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, 99–100.


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Additionally, Spain did not take sufficient advantage of the opportunities offered by World War II to the neutrals. Spain’s industrial production grew at the slowest rate among the neutrals during the Second World War, increasing at an annual rate of 0.7 percent, compared to 1.3 percent for Turkey and 3.7 percent for Portugal. One of the few obligations fulfilled by Spain was the liquidation of its financial debt to the Third Reich, accrued during the civil war, and paid off through the presence of Spanish workers in Germany, soldiers in the Blue Division, and tungsten ore shipments. Spain’s preferred economic and political partners—Germany and Italy—could not provide it with essential commodities, either, including oil, grain, and machinery, given their own shortages.10 The Spanish economy grew in only two of the years of World War II— 1942 and 1944—and even then only marginally. As late as 1945, Spanish national income levels were still below those of 1935. Even the growth in public-sector investment did not translate into improved economic conditions, as only a small percentage of the national budget—13 to 19 percent—went to public works and infrastructure, despite the necessity of repairing essential services, transportation, and housing. As much as 45 percent of the budget went to military spending, with another 6 to 10 percent devoted to internal security.11 The choice of autarky, and “the subordination of private interests to those of the nation,” was made primarily on political grounds: to preserve the independence of Spain. Franco viewed Spain’s previous weakness, loss of colonies, and international unimportance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the result of excessive dependence on foreign states for trade, investment, and diplomatic support. He regarded the British and French as having exploited Spain’s weakness for their own ends. By reducing the dependence of the Spanish economy on these two states, he believed he would increase his nation’s financial, imperial, and political autonomy in the world. Along these lines, the Franco regime decreed that all companies operating within Spain had to be majority-owned by Spaniards, with foreign investors limited to 25 percent ownership of any corporation. Foreigners working in Madrid had to apply for and present a “Tarjeta de Identidad Professional” card from the Ministry of Syndical

10. Casas Sánchez, La Postguerra Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 39, 95; Leitz, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, 139; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 80, 96, 274; Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 21–23; Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain, 315–16. 11. Albert Carreras, “Depresión Económica y Cambio Estructural,” 7–8, 21.


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Organization and Action. No foreigner could be employed as a manager, director, or chief of a business unless they were the owner or no Spaniard was qualified to occupy this position.12 One of the key features of Spanish autarky was regulation. In order to direct investment toward what the regime considered appropriate objectives, business leaders had to complete a variety of requirements. All businesses, from the smallest sidewalk merchant to large department stores, had to register and receive business permits from the Comisión de Incorporación Industrial y Mercantil, and particular industries faced strict requirements. For example, the hotel industry could only use Spanish products in their establishment, unless the government made an exception for reasons of international politics. Owners of hotels, hostels, and other lodgings, in their registration, had to certify their number of guest beds, subject to surprise inspections to prevent underreporting.13 This micromanagement was carried out at such levels that the state ordered daily newspapers to have a minimum staff of eighteen to operate, even specifying the number of reporters, editors, and support staff. While these regulations were not a burden to the ten larger newspapers with circulations of more than eighty thousand—ABC, Arriba, YA, Solidaridad Nacional, La Vanguardia Española, Levante, Madrid, Pueblo, Informaciones, and La Prensa — seventy-seven out of the approximately one hundred daily newspapers had circulations of less than twenty thousand. The government also retained the right to veto or dismiss appointments of managers, executives, and board members of corporations, ensuring that companies would investigate prospective hires to verify their political background.14 Employers were also restricted in the means by which they could advertise and fill job openings. Businesses seeking to hire workers had to register at local placement offices, initially run by the Ministry of Syndical Organization and Action and later by the Sindicatos. Unemployed workers also had to register at the same locations, although women could instead register at the local offices of the Sección Femenina. Newspapers could not run advertisements for openings without showing proof that the jobs had been registered this way. Employers also had other requirements, some without any obvious reason, such as the decree issued by the civil governor of

12. Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 20; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 155; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 27; Arriba, April 30, 1939; YA, September 1, 1939; Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 257. 13. Arriba, April 4, 18, May 5, 1939. 14. Ibid., February 18, 1940, April 22, 1942; YA, August 26, 1939, February 18, 1940.


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Madrid that businesses had to pay their workers monthly rather than daily, weekly, or twice monthly. Workers also had to maintain a syndical identification card and a logbook with their employment history, a document that could only be updated by the Sindicatos.15 Franco saw economic autarky as a permanent correction to centuries of reliance on external investment, manufactured goods, and markets. He prepared a ten-year program for national resurgence, incorporating import substitution and increasing agricultural production. According to this plan, Spain would be self-sufficient within four years in food and armaments, with an additional six to complete total reconstruction. Several major laws laid an early foundation for Francoist economics. First, the October 1939 “Law for the Protection and Development of National Industry” encouraged import substitution through designating firms as operating in the “national interest.” This status, given to companies manufacturing goods that otherwise would be imported, made them eligible for fifteen years of 50 percent tax reductions, allowed them to bypass import restrictions, gave them the ability to use eminent domain, and guaranteed that they would receive a profit return on investments of at least 4 percent. If profits or dividends exceeded 7 percent, then the government would receive half of the excess, although in practice firms were able to avoid this through accounting tricks. At the state’s discretion, these benefits could be extended for additional years and were only conferred on firms owned at least 75 percent by Spanish citizens, or 100 percent for armaments companies, with the same percentages applicable to the workforce. Some of the industries that received this designation were automobiles, textile cellulose, artificial fibers, and film production.16 A second law, enacted in November 1939, was the “Law of Regulation and Defense of National Industry.” Under this rule, public or private companies or proprietors receiving any state aid or contracts had to buy all goods from domestic producers, no matter how much more expensive domestic products were. The only exceptions were made for firms that could prove that what they wanted to buy was not produced in Spain, or was of unusable quality or insufficient quantity.17 The result of these and other regulations was to increase the profits in certain sectors, especially

15. Arriba, April 21, May 10, November 1, 1939, April 7, May 4, 1940; YA, August 5, 1939. 16. Richards, A Time of Silence, 113–14; Ellwood, Franco, 115–16; Preston, Franco, 344–45; Payne, The Franco Regime, 248–49; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 29; Arriba, October 25, 1939, March 16, 1940; Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain, 317. 17. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 30.


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for banks, heavy industry, and other sectors regarded as in the national interest, but with seriously distorting effects. Spanish society and (the business sectors) . . . paid a very high price for the economic policy espoused by the Francoist authorities. . . . In fact only a very small minority reaped great benefits from the high level of official interventionism. . . . The vast majority (industrialists, small businessmen and small farmers) experienced great hardship. In fact, due to the fall in national income, production and productivity in those years, business profits fell, though not as dramatically as salaries. It would therefore be false to claim that the autarky model allowed private enterprise to maximize profits. In exact terms, the economic results of the post-war period, seen as a whole, indicate a level of stagnation . . . unprecedented in the history of contemporary Europe.18

Unlike, for example, the Great Depression or the agricultural depression of the early 1920s, both the result of European or even worldwide conditions, Spanish economic stagnation during the Second World War resulted from the regime’s choice of autarky. The central tool for the promotion of autarky was the Instituto Nacional de Industria—INI (National Institute of Industry), a state-run investment and holding company that promoted development through creating or controlling industrial investment. Created in September 1941, the INI focused on four main areas, demonstrating the regime’s priorities: military production, transportation, iron and steel, and projects to improve self-sufficiency in raw materials. The INI favored large, vertically integrated industries, and the import and production of capital goods, rather than consumer goods. In some cases, the INI collaborated with private industry; in others, it was the sole investor in projects. Some specific areas that received significant investment were domestic fuel production, fertilizers, steel, and electric power generation. Spain’s emphasis on its military industry and arms imports, especially from Germany, also hindered its economic development, as nearly 20 percent of all state investments in the economy through the INI went to the domestic arms industry.19 The regime often expressed itself in unwarranted optimism about the dismal economy. Even as hunger pervaded the country in summer 1939,

18. Cabrera and del Rey, “Spanish Entrepreneurs in the Era of Fascism,” 55. 19. Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 31–32; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 30–31; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 240–41; Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 741–42.


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the press hailed an expected harvest that “promises to be splendid.” A few weeks later, the Ministry for Industry and Commerce declared their food stocks would be “normally supplied” and that Spain’s “economic independence is fully assured.” Even Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s Interior minister and brother-in-law, declared in January 1940 that Spain would be able to resolve all of its economic difficulties in a year or two.20 More realistic was the assessment by Joaquín Benjumea, minister of Agriculture, in November 1939, who accurately predicted that it would take at least ten years to recover from the civil war, even longer if the European conflict endured. One cartoonist also illustrated the pervasive hunger in society with a strip about a diver finding a mermaid. While one panel shows him carrying her off romantically, the next shows the diver carving into the lower half of the mermaid, his desire for love overwhelmed by his desire for food. Thousands of Spaniards died from hunger during the Second World War, with some estimating the number of deaths to be as high as two hundred thousand.21 The Falange had promised before the civil war that when it came to power it would launch a social and economic revolution. Its 1933 platform included proposals for land reform, bank nationalizations, and other radical measures. The focus of Falangist economic plans was National Syndicalism, a program of vertical integration by profession and trade. The first leader of the Falangist Sindicatos, created to implement National Syndicalism, was Gerardo Salvador Merino. His plan was to merge all unions, employer’s associations, and cooperatives into syndicates, controlled by the Falange. He believed that this reorganization would promote the national interest instead of the selfish interests of workers, owners, managers, or stockholders. Wanting to create in “the masses . . . a new syndical conscience,” he undertook dramatic measures to incorporate the working class into the Falange, leading party newspapers to praise his actions as indications that, at long last, National Syndicalism was making progress.22 Not all Falangists welcomed Salvador’s efforts, regarding his service as a provincial chief of the Falange before the civil war as insufficient political pedigree to merit the high office. Others complained that the syndical leader was excessively ambitious and wanted to be secretary general of the Falange, or to control a super-ministry combining all economic areas of

20. YA, July 2, 29, 1939, January 20, March 31, 1940. 21. Ibid., November 14, 26, 1939; Richards, A Time of Silence, 92; Isaías Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria: La Explotación de los Presos Bajo el Franquismo, 155. 22. Arriba, April 5, May 4, 1940; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 65–67, 97–99, 123–27.


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responsibility. Business leaders as well had misgivings about his appointment, fearing his totalitarian impulses could lead to their subordination to the Sindicatos. The revolutionary ideas of Salvador reminded Spanish landowners and businessmen of the inflammatory rhetoric of Spain’s Popular Front: not what they expected to hear from an official of the Franco regime.23 The mandate of the Sindicatos, as stated in the January 1940 Law for Syndical Organization, was to adjudicate disputes between workers and employers, represent and discipline workers, compile economic statistics, and propose price controls and new regulations on production, distribution, and conservation of products. The final objective of these measures was to create “the National Syndicalist Community as a militant unit under the discipline of the Movement.” Salvador recognized that the majority of workers had not supported the Nationalist uprising and that to gain their support the Falangist Party would have to offer the working class “the social justice that they desire, the needed bread for their homes . . . [so that] . . . they will feel linked to the Fatherland.” Under the terms of the Syndical law, “all associations created to represent economic or class interests would become integrated into the syndical organization of the Falange.” The organization of Gerardo Salvador, therefore, became the only legal vehicle for economic change in the Franco regime, whether for workers, owners, or managers. Even groups as small as the Sociedad General de Autores de España (General Association of Spanish Authors) could not maintain their independence and became part of the syndical system in early 1940.24 Within weeks of the new law, Salvador ordered the assimilation of private and cooperative organizations into the Sindicatos, starting with agriculture. The first association assimilated was the venerable Asociación General de Ganaderos (General Association of Livestock Ranchers), descendant of the sheep farming cartel that had dominated grazing in central Spain for centuries. In April 1940 the Junta Central absorbed the Asociación Nacional de Olivareros (National Association of Olive Producers) and MAPFRE—Mutuas Aseguradoras de Proprietarios de Fincas Rusticas de España (Mutual Association of Proprietors of Rural Farms of Spain), a cooperative of small farmers. Not even the rural Catholic associations remained autonomous. This final action gained the enmity of the church, 23. Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 194–97; Carlos Fernández Santander, Alzamiento y Guerra Civil en Galicia (1936–1939), vol. 2, 1114. 24. Arriba, January 18, 27, 31, February 23, December 7, 1940, March 27, 1941.


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which had expected to preserve its institutions after being so strongly supportive of the Nationalist cause.25 Salvador focused much of his early attention on agriculture, the most important element in the Spanish economy. He chose it as the sole topic for the second annual Consejo Sindical (Syndical Conference), held in Madrid in June 1941. The syndical leader proposed land reform to break up the latifundios (vast estates) in southern Spain and to merge inefficient microfarms in northwestern Spain. His program, unveiled at the conference, included these elements as well as discussions of agricultural labor, reforesting, capital access, price reforms, and rural taxation. The meetings dominated the news for the first three weeks of June, attended by nearly every important political figure, including Pilar Primo de Rivera, Ramón Serrano, and Francisco Franco, who presided over the final day. Salvador raised eyebrows when he claimed that the Sindicatos were the strongest force fighting against the black market and the only organization that really wanted to end these corrupt practices. After a storm of protest by other members of the government and Falange, all of whom claimed equal determination to fight the black market, the syndical leader had to recant his statement four days later.26 The most radical declarations at the conference came from one of Salvador’s deputies, Antonio Correa Veglison, who denounced the large latifundios as “an evident social injustice” and called for government intervention in the economy everywhere private initiative failed. At his last speech to the meeting, Salvador echoed Correa’s comments, adding that the Sindicatos would not allow any economic organizations of employers to remain independent, and that “the days of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry,” the business associations which had been tremendously influential and autonomous before 1936, “. . . were numbered.” In practice, however, most of these chambers and professional organizations remained outside the control of the Sindicatos, despite the plans of Gerardo Salvador and his followers.27 Salvador had been even more confrontational in an October 1940 speech commemorating the foundation of the Falange in 1933 and the Sindicatos in 1934: 25. Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 197–199, 290; Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and Manuel González de Molina, “Política Social Agrarian del Primer Franquismo,” El Primer Franquismo: España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 148–61; Arriba, February 7, 10, April 4, 27, August 11, December 6, 1940. 26. Arriba, March 18, 19, May 8, 17, June 1, 3, 5–7, 10, 11, 1941. 27. Ibid., June 15, 17–22, 1941; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 350.


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The Marxist masses were hostile to the Falange back then; today the employer’s associations are hostile to the Falange, with camouflaged and deadly hostility. The Marxists did not love us then, and they declared they forced us to fight for our lives, first on street corners and then in the trenches; and the capitalists do not love us today and they have declared covert war against us in the crossroads of politics and in the fields of the international struggle. But against any and all we raise a substantial truth: the Falange aspires to be the only popularly-led movement which feels and serves as none other the idea of social justice.28

Business leaders could not help but be alarmed at this strong rhetoric directed against them and their interests. Another characteristic of Salvador Merino’s tenure as syndical chief was mass demonstrations organized by the Sindicatos. Imitating the Nazi and Fascist style, syndical leaders stage-managed parades, rallies, and other public events, some involving hundreds of thousands of workers, beginning in 1939. The most important of these demonstrations took place on July 18, the anniversary of the Nationalist uprising, but other events also happened on May 1 (Labor Day), October 29 (Founding of the Falange), November 20 (Death of José Antonio), and other politically significant days. Salvador’s activities gained him the ire of more conservative leaders in the military and economy, who did not share his enthusiasm for a Nazistyle revolution and identification with the working class. Even Serrano Suñer, initially an ally of Salvador, began to become concerned that the Sindicatos might overshadow not just the rest of the Falange, but also the government.29 The Sindicatos grew exponentially during the Second World War, incorporating as they did all workers and employers in one organization. From essentially nothing in early 1940, by the middle of 1941 there were almost four million members in the union, including almost seven hundred thousand in Barcelona. Organized into twenty-four Sindicatos by industry or profession, these unions were well on their way to absorbing all active workers, as well as working to find employment for the half million officially unemployed Spaniards. Although this growth began under the leadership of Salvador Merino, during the summer of 1941 he became embroiled in a scandal that would end his career. An anonymous tip revealed that he had been a low-ranking Freemason before the Spanish Civil War, an offense which could lead to the death penalty in Franco’s Spain. Although Salvador 28. Arriba, October 29, 1940. 29. Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 257, 260; Payne, The Franco Regime, 263–64.


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did not face this sentence or serve any prison time, on October 23, 1941, a special tribunal expelled him from the Falange, and while he was on his honeymoon he was removed from his leadership positions and banned from ever again holding any government offices or contracts.30 His replacement in September 1941, Manuel Valdes Larrañaga, was a less radical Falangist, who became acting syndical leader. A friend of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, he had become in 1933 the second member of the Falange. More important than his political heritage was his loyalty to the regime. From the beginning of the civil war he had accepted Franco’s leadership without question and was not enthusiastic about the Nazi model. Valdes moved the Sindicatos into a direction less threatening to business leaders, investors, and conservatives. Valdes improved the organization’s efficiency, restored its finances, and removed most of Salvador’s more radical accomplices. His vision, and those of later syndical leaders, was to promote “paternal authoritarianism,” controlling rather than empowering workers. As an indication of how much more conservative the Sindicatos became, in late 1943 the entire organization was “consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” an action unimaginable under the radical Falangist Salvador Merino, a former Freemason hostile to the power of the church.31 An initial reluctance by employers to join the Sindicatos gradually faded with the elimination of Salvador Merino’s influence. While concerned about the apparent radicalism of the organization and its promises to win the hearts and minds of the workers through advocacy on behalf of the downtrodden, these fears declined. By the end of the Second World War, employers increasingly dominated or even ignored the Sindicatos, able to hire and dismiss workers without deference or reference to what had initially been feared as a powerful check on the autonomy of business leaders.32 The Spanish Civil War did cause significant damage to Spain’s economy and infrastructure, making reconstruction a serious challenge after the end of the conflict on April 1, 1939. By some estimates, Spain suffered as much as one billion pesetas in losses as a result of the civil war, although still less than 10 percent of its overall wealth. The Spanish economy in 1940 was behind where it had been in 1930, despite the regime’s exaggerated claim 30. Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 263–64; Fernández Santander, Alzamiento y Guerra Civil en Galicia (1936–1939), vol. 2, 1114; Arriba, July 11, 18, 1941. 31. Arriba, September 14, 1941, November 26, 1943; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento (1936–1952), 213–14; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 300–301; Girón, Si la Memoria no me Falla, 95–96. 32. Richards, A Time of Silence, 121–22.


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that Spain was one of “the three great continental economies.” Overall output fell by 25 percent during the 1930s, and grew at only 1.25 percent annually in the 1940s. The banking situation was also catastrophic. At the beginning of the conflict, the Spanish Republicans controlled the Bank of Spain and its gold, the world’s fourth-largest reserves at $500 million. Fearful of a Nationalist offensive that might seize these assets, the Republican government sent almost all of its gold and foreign reserves to France and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union received more than four hundred tons of Spanish gold, the majority of these deposits. With limited resources and an arms embargo by the major powers, the Republicans spent these resources on weapons, principally from the Soviet Union.33 At the end of the civil war, the Franco regime had almost no gold or foreign currency reserves with which to restart international trade. The Nationalists had created their own Bank of Spain in their territory, leading to two pesetas, two inflation rates, and two completely distinct banking systems, making the economic integration of the two zones difficult. One banking measure taken by the Nationalist regime in August 1936 was a ban on new financial institutions, a restriction maintained until after the end of the Second World War. While intended to help modernize the Spanish economy, this decree also led to the intensive concentration of financial institutions, with the five largest banks concentrating the majority of private capital after 1939, and able to pay high dividends—as much as 8 percent—to their investors.34 When the war ended, the task of merging banks and financial institutions in Republican and Nationalist zones was a significant challenge. The new combined Bank of Spain only accepted as legitimate the Nationalist peseta, as well as currency issued by the Republic before July 18, 1936. The millions of pesetas printed by the Republican government during the war became worthless except as souvenirs, although the government did allow Spaniards to turn in up to one hundred pesetas in Republican coins for new Nationalist currency. A series of bank reforms introduced in

33. Ricardo de la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo: Origenes y Configuración (1939–1945), 108–9; Payne, The Franco Regime, 246; Julio Martín Casas and Pedro Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español (1936–1978), 25. 34. Roberto Álvarez Llano and José Miguel Andreu García, Una Historia de la Banca Privada en España, vol. 2, 24–26; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 66, 68–69; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 14; Arriba, September 20, 1940; Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 262; “Informe de la D.G.S. Sobre la Situación Nacional,” Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 84; Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain, 392–93.


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the first few years of World War II made modest changes, including increasing the secrecy of private accounts, placing limitations on the payment of dividends by banks, and a partial reorganization of the banking system to absorb banks from the Republican zone. Still, it took more than a year before Spanish banks were in a position to pay interest on normal savings accounts and bonds, and Spain continued to suffer from a severe lack of domestic capital to fund reconstruction and new investment.35 The financial sector also took significant time to revive normal operations. The three principal stock markets, in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, did not reopen until March 1940—a hiatus of almost four years—and even then trading was very limited. An indication that finances were returning to normal came in July 1940 when treasury bonds were floated, an offering that within a few days sold more than four million worth of one thousand, five thousand and twenty-five thousand peseta notes, each paying 3 percent annually.36 Spain’s transportation network also suffered dramatically from the civil war. With few navigable rivers, a shortage of civilian aircraft, and poor roads, railways were vital in Spain. From just under three thousand steam locomotives in 1936, the nation was down to just more than eighteen hundred by April 1939. The number of passenger cars fell from more than four thousand to fewer than two thousand, and cargo wagons from seventy to forty thousand. To cope with these catastrophic losses, in 1941 the Spanish government consolidated all smaller rail companies into one large state holding company, the Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles — RENFE (National Network of Spanish Railroads), thus creating the fourthlargest public rail company in Western Europe, behind only France, Germany, and Italy. RENFE began electrification of the system, which had run almost entirely on coal. By 1945, RENFE had rebuilt or restored almost nine hundred locomotives and doubled the number of rail passengers over the 1935 figure. Spain’s system also labored under the burden of incompatibility with the rest of Europe, as it used a different gauge size for its tracks.37 At sea, the losses were no easier to recoup. Even by 1943, after four years of domestic peace and dramatically increased government shipyard 35. Álvarez Llano and Andreu García, Una Historia de la Banca Privada en España, vol. 2, 25–26, 28–29; Arriba, April 4, 1939, April 26, 1940; Payne, The Franco Regime, 247; Tortella, The Development of Modern Spain, 391–92. 36. Arriba, March 2, July 5, 9, 1940; YA, February 25, 1940. 37. Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 74; Arriba, March 30, 1939, March 16, 1945; YA, February 25, 1942.


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orders for the Basque country, shipping was only at 71 percent of the 1931 level, with the vast majority of the merchant fleet dedicated to fishing and coastal transport. Sinking of Spanish merchant vessels, by both the Axis and Allies, accounted for another one hundred ships lost. Regular civilian flights from Madrid to Portugal and Barcelona, and from there to Italy, Great Britain, and France, did not revive until more than a year after the end of the civil war, or as late as summer 1941 in the case of routes to Germany. Overall iron output, essential to the entire transportation system, was at only 84 percent of the 1931 level, despite the emphasis put on this industry by the regime.38 The shortage of gold reserves led the Nationalist government to ask the public to donate their jewelry, gold coins, and private bullion to help stabilize the nation’s finances. The regime also was gullible to false claims of discoveries of new gold mines, such as the trumpeted summer 1939 find in Robledillo de Gata, near Cáceres, allegedly worth vast amounts, but in the end a worthless stake. Fortunately, the French government promised, in the Jordana-Berard Agreement signed between the foreign ministers of France and Spain, to return to Spain all gold, weapons, vehicles, valuables, ships, art, and other valuables sent there by the Republican government for safekeeping during the civil war. Within a few weeks, the French sent back forty tons of gold, in five large trucks, from their depository at Mont de Marsan, a stockpile worth $26.8 million.39 The gold reserves of the Spanish government did rise dramatically during the Second World War, from approximately 27 tons in 1939 to 110 in mid-1945, an increase of 83 tons. Still, this figure placed it below the increases of Sweden (161), Turkey (212), Portugal (372), and Switzerland (641). The value of gold held by the Spanish government rose, from 1939 to 1945, from $49 million to $124.3 million (at an exchange rate of nine to ten pesetas to the dollar), almost all held by the Instituto Española de Moneda Extranjera, a state agency created in August 1939 to set exchange rates and keep possession of Spain’s precious metals and foreign currency.40 38. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 36; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 72–73; Jordi Catalán, “Autarquía y Desarrollo de la Industria de Fábrica,” 92–93; Jose Miguel Romaña Arteaga, La Segunda Guerra Mundial y los Vascos, 25; Arriba, May 3, 4, 1940, January 28, 1941, July 25, 1943, March 10, 1944; YA, July 3, 1941. 39. Arriba, May 6, 7, July 30, August 11, 17, 1939; Francisco Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia: Los Diarios del Conde de Jordana, 1936–1944, July 15, 24, 1939; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 138–40. 40. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 93; Pablo Martín Aceña, ed., Los Movimientos de Oro en España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 63; José Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 98–99; Arriba, April 2, July 5, August 27, November 3, 1939.


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The principal reason for the increase in Spain’s gold reserves was revenue from the sale of tungsten ore, a commodity vital in steel alloys for military manufacturing. While the Allies had sufficient supplies for their own needs, the product was available to Germany only from Spain and Portugal. Hoping to limit Spanish sales to the Third Reich, the Allies outbid the Germans and bought thousands of tons of the ore, even though it was useless to them. They also agreed to pay a $10,000 tax on every ton of tungsten ore sold. From 1941 to 1943, government income from tungsten ore sales rose from $700,000 to $60 million per year.41 The Allies became increasingly frustrated with Spanish opportunism in this area, and in retaliation for Franco’s refusal to end shipments to Germany, cut off all oil for four months, from February to May 1944. Although the regime continued to sell tungsten ore to Germany, it agreed to enter negotiations with the Allies to end this trade. The agreements between the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain that ended this impasse called for a gradual end of tungsten ore sales to the Third Reich and the resumption of oil shipments. Spain promised to limit its shipments of tungsten ore to twenty tons per month in May and June, and then to forty tons monthly thereafter. By early June, rationed gasoline was once again available at normal levels, and the newspapers demonstrated the change with photos of before the agreement—with streets deserted by automobiles— and after —with traffic clogging the streets of Madrid. The Allied liberation of France limited Spain’s ability to sell tungsten ore to Germany, and therefore the May Agreement became less relevant, although the Allies continued to sell petroleum and food to the regime. Despite its promises, Spain continued to smuggle tungsten ore to Germany, although in small amounts.42 Although the tungsten ore trade was important in building Spain’s reserves, far more Spaniards were directly involved in the agricultural sector, an industry that had suffered disproportionately from the civil war. By 1939, after almost three years of war, Spain had 30 percent fewer cattle, 50 percent fewer swine, and a reduction of wheat-growing land from 4.5 to 3.5 million hectares. After four years of reconstruction, Spanish agriculture in 1943 was only at 83.5 percent of the production levels of 1931. Despite these losses, in general, the civil war left agriculture mostly undisturbed in both zones, with wartime destruction at minimal levels. Among 41. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 35. 42. Arriba, May 5, 1944; YA, May 3, 9, June 4, 1944; Preston, Franco, 511–12; Leitz, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945, 170–99.


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draft animals, only in oxen and mules were there large shortages. There was, however, an enduring drought, and locusts plagued farmers, adding to difficulties importing agricultural machinery because of the regime’s efforts to reduce dependence on foreign producers. Spanish agriculture during the Second World War was almost entirely nonmechanized, and imports were limited to a few hundred tractors per year, which did not encourage domestic production. Imports of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which before 1936 had been purchased at an annual rate of 513,000 tons, fell to 95,000 annually during the Second World War.43 With the destruction of the civil war, an increasing percentage of the population was forced to rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Spain experienced a reversal of the industrial revolution, with hundreds of thousands of workers leaving cities for the rural countryside. The percentage of the workforce engaged in agricultural labor increased from 45 percent in 1935 to 52 percent in 1940, declining to 50 percent by 1945. Of the European nations in the twentieth century, only the Soviet Union in the 1920s experienced a similar deindustrialization, also in the aftermath of a civil war. Spain arrived at the paradoxical condition of “more agriculturalists but less agriculture,” as the increased numbers of farm laborers were 30 percent less productive than during the prewar period. With its poor soil, low rainfall, and unproductive land, Spain’s grain yields were less than 50 percent those of England or Germany, and well behind France and even Italy.44 Drought continued to be a problem, causing severe damage to crops. Rice in Valencia, wine in Tarragona, and cereal in Zaragoza suffered equally from the parched earth, with farm production a fraction of what it could have been with adequate rainfall. The 1944–1945 season broke all records to become the driest in the century, and led to water shortages and restrictions. In Madrid during the summer, water was shut off between 10:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. every night, with fines for wasting water. The Agriculture Ministry warned about the possible effects of the drought, predicting that Spaniards should expect “the sad reality” of “great difficulties in the food supply.”45

43. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 29–31; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 34; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 79–81; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 14, 36; Arriba, May 16, 1940. 44. Carreras, “Depresión Económica y Cambio Estructural,” 28–30; Edward Malefakis, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain, 12, 66–73, 99. 45. Arriba, May 6, 10, 12, 29, June 22, 1945.


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The importance of agriculture to the Spanish economy can hardly be overstated. Especially under the system of autarky followed by the regime, food production was vital to the survival of the population, as well as to its economic independence. Industry, the next largest sector, employed only 22 percent of the workforce, with the rest in services or state employment. For an overwhelmingly rural country, subsistence farming was widespread and agricultural underemployment endemic.46 Despite its dependence on agriculture, the Spanish government did not make wise decisions in this sector. For example, despite Spain’s comparative advantage in citrus production and the difficulties in growing wheat on the arid soil in many regions, the government discouraged orange growers from expanding crops and did little to aid other crops, such as wine and olive oil, which depended on external markets.47 Rather than encouraging production in areas such as these where Spain enjoyed a comparative advantage, the regime suggested to farmers that wheat was a more apt product. On the other hand, the state’s monopoly on wheat sales, through the Servicio Nacional del Trigo (National Wheat Service), ensured that prices remained low, in some cases below the cost of production. The result of this was that Spain ended up with less of an easily exportable crop and more black market wheat sales. In the 1941–1942 seasons, for example, slight increases in the wheat and rye harvests were accompanied by strong declines in corn, peas, beans, chickpeas, lentils, and potatoes. With more than 40 percent of the land already devoted to grains, but only producing at 75 percent of the yields achieved during the Second Republic, the marginal increases achieved by the regime moved Spain away from the slight diversification it had enjoyed before the civil war and toward a stagnant grain monoculture.48 Wheat production was the highest agricultural priority of the regime, despite its counterproductive measures that forced producers out on the black market. To try to limit illegal trade in this crop, wheat growers had to inform the Servicio Nacional del Trigo of their crop yields every fall by September 30.49 The Ministry of Agriculture decreed in July 1939 that all wheat harvested in Spain had to be sold at official prices through the Servicio Nacional de Trigo (SNT), which would also set prices in June of 46. Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 32–33; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 14. 47. Cabrera and del Rey, “Spanish Entrepreneurs in the Era of Fascism,” 56. 48. Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 34–35; YA, January 1, 1943; Richards, A Time of Silence, 130–31, 133–34; Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 254. 49. Arriba, July 14, 1939.


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every year for the following twelve months. The Servicio added to the complexity of its problem, and the attractiveness of the black market, by setting different prices in each province, leading producers to withdraw wheat and other commodities from areas of lower prices to sell them in provinces with a higher return. The SNT was an effort to replace the free market in grain with one controlled by decree, but it only succeeded in reducing production and creating a black market in wheat and the other grains and legumes it regulated.50 Faced with shortages caused by its own regulations, the regime tried to force increased production by penalizing farmers who did not plant their fields or left large areas unnecessarily fallow. Property owners had to declare their acreage under cultivation, which could then be checked against land records to make sure there was no cheating. The state also attempted to improve cultivation through introducing moderate land reform, through recovering wetlands, expropriating land (with payment to owners), and providing new irrigation for arid zones. Even the Falange became involved, with provincial chiefs ordered to submit to the secretary general of the party weekly reports on the availability of bread in their regions. The regime also took careful inventories of wheat shipments, including tracking the forty freight cars full of wheat that arrived to supply Madrid with bread every day.51 In addition to the regulations on farmers, all manufacturers and distributors of wheat or bread products had to register with the Servicio Nacional de Trigo, and also to inform the agency about how much wheat and bread they had on hand at all times. Merchants and producers of other foods had to inform the authorities within seventy-two hours of delivery of any products in their possession that were “primary necessities”: basic food products such as oil, sugar, rice, potatoes, eggs, and cheese, as well as live animals. Despite the government’s measures to increase wheat production, overall output still fell from four million tons in 1935 to just more than three million in 1944–1945, and less than two million in 1945–1946.52 The case of sugar is also illustrative of the problems in Spanish agriculture, and the challenges defeating the regime’s plans for self-sufficiency. Spain used far more sugar than it produced. While even low rationing levels

50. Ibid., July 2, 1939; Arco Blanco, Las Alas del Ave Fénix, 153; Richards, A Time of Silence, 135. 51. Arriba, January 25, April 14, May 16, 1940; YA, January 30, 1940. 52. YA, July 4, August 6, 1939; Report, February 13, 1946, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, 3, 242.


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required 250,000 metric tons annually, in 1941 Spain produced 89,400 tons, in 1942 176,900 tons, and in 1943 only 130,000 tons. Even if it would have been able to increase its production to 200,000—something it proved unable to do until after the Second World War—it still would have needed to import 50,000 tons annually to accommodate domestic demand. With these conditions, Spanish consumers could count on being able to buy only about 50 percent of their official ration of sugar.53 Tobacco cultivation operated under similar circumstances, with domestic production only fulfilling five of the fifteen to twenty-five million tons consumed per year, the rest imported from Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Cuba. The black market in tobacco was particularly expensive, given the problems with the program as established in 1940. Only men received weekly allocations of this product, fifty grams of raw tobacco or two packs of cigarettes. Women who smoked had no recourse but to purchase illegally or borrow from nonsmoking acquaintances. However, since even nonsmoking males received this ration coupon, it was to be expected that nonconsumers would sell or trade their shares to smokers. The reduced amounts officially available were in any case very small, forcing habitual smokers to purchase on the black market or suffer the unpleasantness of nicotine withdrawal.54 In addition to agricultural weakness, the Spanish economy suffered a severe lack of housing, especially for the working classes. As a result of the destruction of the civil war, as many as half a million homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, leaving as many as four million Spaniards without housing or living in temporary accommodations. It was almost impossible to find an apartment for rent in Madrid, Valencia, or Barcelona that a lower- or middle-income family could afford, at 100 to 150 pesetas per month. For those with higher incomes, there was no such problem, as there was a surplus of large and luxurious apartments renting for 300 to 500 pesetas per month. Thus, many families were forced to join with others to share units in the more expensive price range. The government provided tax and profit incentives to encourage private investment in low- and mid-income housing, but the private sector did not respond fast enough to accommodate the need.55

53. Arriba, January 25, 1944. 54. Carlos Barciela, “La España del ‘Estraperlo,’ ” 106; Arriba, January 26, 1944; YA, February 15, 1940. 55. Arriba, July 13, 1943; YA, July 5, 1939, September 25, 1941, May 11, 1944; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 108.


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These housing shortages led to the erection of vast slums in the suburbs of Madrid and other major cities. In the areas surrounding the capital, as many as four hundred thousand madrileños lived in conditions of absolute squalor. In addition to the poor housing, there were almost no churches or schools. Gutters and ditches overflowed with garbage and waste, and disease was an ongoing concern for municipal authorities. There was no running water or electricity available for the vast majority of these residents. These tragic conditions coexisted, as even the Falangist press reported, less than “ten minutes from the ‘skyscrapers, luxurious cinemas, the cafes and grand avenues’” of downtown Madrid. The regime did build thousands of housing units throughout Spain, but the Instituto Nacional de Vivienda (National Institute of Housing) did not have the means to reconstruct quickly the tens of thousands of homes and apartment buildings destroyed during the civil war.56 By most estimates, Spain lost 250,000 to 380,000 dead in the Spanish Civil War. While this is a tremendous figure, it still equaled only 1 to 1.5 percent of the entire population. Even the higher estimate of half a million was less than 2 percent of the country, albeit concentrated among the young and skilled. Two other drains on the labor force were the prison population, just more than 250,000 in the year following the civil war, and the permanent exiles, approximately 175,000, perhaps combined adding up to another 1.5 percent. In comparison, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union lost more than 10 percent of their populations during the Second World War. The comparative record of Francoist Spain was one of underperformance and economic mistakes.57 For the vast majority of peasants, rural labourers and factory workers, the 1940s was a decade of harvest failure, short-time work, water shortages, power cuts, hunger and rationing. . . . in the fields and workshops of Franco’s Spain, the dictatorship became a by-word for misery, retardation and abject failure in just about every facet of economic life, apart from a thriving black market. Thanks largely to its mismanagement of economic affairs, little improvement took place before the appearance of faltering growth in the 1950s.58

From 1941 to 1945, average annual national income increased by 1 percent, not compensating for the 6 percent annual drop from 1936 to 1940. 56. Arriba, January 9, 1945; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 140–41. 57. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 26–27, 52, 54–55, 57–58; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 30. 58. Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 11–12.


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It was not just the civil war that caused damage, since the main industrial sectors of the Basque country —metallurgy and chemicals—and Catalonia —textiles—were nearly untouched by war.59 Not every sector failed. The mines and smelters of the Basque country increased their production, allowing Spain to approach self-sufficiency in iron and steel. This region held as much as 72 percent of Spain’s steel, iron, and pig iron capacity. By improved technical means, as well as the merciless exploitation of prison labor, iron producers were able to increase their production by 100 percent between 1940 and 1945, while employing only 35 percent more laborers. The largest iron and steel company, Altos Hornos de Vizcaya, increased its profits from ten million pesetas in 1939 to more than twenty million by the end of the war, at the same time buying out several competitors and establishing “virtual monopoly status” in the industry. This success was possible because the government favored Altos Hornos with tax breaks, the right to expropriate land, important contracts from the military and INI, and status for some of its divisions as industries of “national interest.”60 Disease was a significant burden on the Spanish economy in the postwar period, especially tuberculosis. Annual deaths from this and other preventable afflictions were between three hundred and four hundred thousand from 1939 to 1945. With so little food available, malnutrition was a constant companion for millions of people, and cases of opportunistic diseases increased: diphtheria, diarrhea, typhoid fever, cholera, and influenza. As a result of disease, malnutrition, and wartime conditions, average life expectancy remained at forty-seven for males and fifty-three for females. As one observer noted: “Hunger, sickness, abandonment, prostitution: these were the plagues which scourged Spain that after the hell of war—and as if that were not suffering enough—had entered in the purgatory of the postwar period.” In southern Spain, where poverty and poor sanitation were widespread, even malaria, nearly extinguished before the civil war, reappeared on the latifundio, causing more than fifteen hundred deaths in 1941 and 1942.61 Within weeks of the occupation of the Spanish capital, the newly established municipal government initiated a program to combat disease and 59. Ibid., 17. 60. Richards, A Time of Silence, 112–13; Catalán, “Autarquía y Desarrollo de la Industria de Fábrica,” 90–92. 61. Pastor Petit, Espionaje, 269; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 51, 59; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 29; Payne, The Franco Regime, 252; Richards, A Time of Silence, 142–43.


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unhealthy conditions that was officially described as “a great campaign to disinfect Madrid of the misery left by Marxism.” According to the mayor, the “Reds” had deliberately left the city diseased, filthy, and deep in waste of all kinds. He therefore ordered property owners, some of them returning after years away from their homes and businesses, to clean up all unhealthy conditions on their property, eliminating stagnant pools, waste, and garbage. Owners of rental properties could insist that their tenants pay for 50 percent of the costs associated with cleanup and repairs, so long as this did not exceed one month’s rent. At the same time, agencies of the government or Falange had to put their staff to work cleaning and disinfecting national property. The government also ordered medical inspections of all government, Falange, and military personnel to prevent the spread of diseases, and committed two hundred thousand pesetas to the cleanup effort.62 To fight disease, the city government, with the assistance of Auxilio Social and the Sección Femenina, organized typhus vaccinations, administering four hundred thousand injections in Madrid and its suburbs. In 1939 the state mandated diphtheria vaccinations for all schoolchildren, after many hundreds had died from the disease in 1938. By 1944, Auxilio Social and the Sección Femenina had administered 1.6 million diphtheria vaccines to Spanish children and hundreds of thousands in the adult population, leading to a decline in overall deaths attributed to this disease from four thousand in 1939 to fifteen hundred in 1941.63 Much of Spain’s economy relied on international trade, despite the regime’s efforts to practice import substitution, protectionist tariffs, and other autarkic policies. As the civil war ended, the Franco regime moved to normalize trade relations with Britain, France, and other nations, at the same time continuing previous agreements with Germany, Italy, and Portugal. While Spain did have some marketable exports, including tungsten, iron ores, olive oil, and animal hides, it was far more dependent on its trading partners than they were on it. The most important Spanish imports were machinery, chemical products, food, cotton, and minerals. At the end of the civil war, Spanish exports to the Third Reich commanded just more than 40 percent of the market, followed by Italy (15 percent), the United States (14 percent), Britain (12 percent), and France (0.3 percent). The Allied blockade in September 1939, however, began to reverse these numbers, as the Axis powers found it increasingly difficult to deliver 62. Arriba, April 21, May 23, 25, 1939. 63. Ibid., August 18, September 1, 1939, March 14, 1944.


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goods purchased in Spanish markets. As historian Denis Smyth noted, the British and French were very intentional in their policies: “The basic idea was to keep Franco on such short rations as would deter Spain from warlike preparations and projects and deny any stockpile of strategic supplies to the Germans should they enter Spanish territory. It was also hoped, however, that the regulated flow of vital supplies to Spain would persuade Franco of the material advantage of continued cooperation with the democracies and the simultaneous disadvantage of active alignment with the Axis.”64 It remains uncertain whether economic pressure from the United Kingdom, and later the United States, was the key factor in persuading Franco to remain out of the conflict, but the material weakness of Spain was one of the arguments he used to request a delay of entry into the war until the Germans supplied him with the resources to do so.65 Germany’s share of Spanish exports plummeted in the wake of the British blockade, to a mere 2 percent of the total, while that of Britain rose to 56 percent in 1939. The changing fortunes of the war reversed this decline, as reflected in Spain’s exports in subsequent years to its three most important trading partners.

Germany Britain United States

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

11% 32% 17%

42% 15% 10%

37% 21% 13%

43% 14% 22%

32% 20% 24%

2% 24% 29%

In imports the picture was much the same:

Germany Britain United States

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

7% 22% 35%

25% 15% 20%

33% 14% 9%

43% 12% 20%

38% 11% 17%

3% 25% 34%66

The most valuable imports from Germany were machinery, military equipment, chemicals (including fertilizers), food, and metals. Spanish 64. Hernández-Sandoica and Moradiellos, “Spain and the Second World War,” 246–47; Richards, A Time of Silence, 92–93; Arriba, April 18, May 4, December 8, 1939, March 19, 1940, February 20, 1944; YA, March 19, 1940; Smyth, “Franco and the Allies in the Second World War,” 186. 65. Leitz, “British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941–1944,” 251–52. 66. Martín Aceña, ed., Los Movimientos de Oro en España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 37.


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exports to the Third Reich included minerals (especially tungsten ore), animal products (including hides and manure), and chemicals, but they did not rise above 2 percent of total German imports from 1941 to 1945. Incredibly, even as the Spanish population went hungry, the Franco regime exported food, especially wheat and olive oil, to Germany and Italy. Commerce with Britain and the United States was even more concentrated in imports of petroleum, food, textiles, and chemicals. While Spain bought most of its industrial requirements from Germany and Italy, as the war developed these two states were less able to trade goods to Spain. At the same time, Spain was increasingly dependent on the Allies, chiefly the United States and the United Kingdom, for food and petroleum, necessities exploited by London and Washington to pressure Spain to remain out of the conflict.67 While Portugal was Spain’s most reliable trading partner, with a secure border, friendly regime, and willingness to sign and implement many trade and financial agreements, Portuguese exports—wine, tungsten ore, olive oil, fruit—mirrored Spanish exports. Neither had significant manufacturing capabilities or the ability to provide the other with machinery, chemicals, armaments, fertilizers, or metals. With the war at sea and frequent regime changes in France, Spain had significant challenges in maintaining regular trade. A trade agreement signed with France in January 1940, for example, became irrelevant with the Nazi occupation and creation of the Vichy regime.68 During late 1940, as German victories continued to mount across Europe, Franco wanted Spain to enter the war. His price to Hitler was steep, however, as the Spanish dictator knew that belligerence would cause the United Kingdom to impose an immediate embargo. In addition to significant territories in North Africa, Spain demanded a massive allocation of food and primary materials, including “a minimum of 300,000 tons of grain, 400,000 tons of gasoline, 200,000 tons of coal, 200,000 tons of fuel oil, and . . . diesel fuel, manganese, hemp, cotton, and much more.” Stunned by the list, the Germans insisted they could not provide this level of assistance, and Spain never did enter the conflict, despite Nazi promises to send as much aid as the German economy could support. An obstacle was German insistence that Spain would not receive the requested

67. Ibid., 32–36, 51–54, 58–60; Leitz, “Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, 1936–1945,” 141; Richards, A Time of Silence, 136–38; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 105. 68. YA, December 14, 1939, January 19, May 22, 29, 1941, February 23, 1943.


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food shipments or other supplies until after it entered the war, which did not encourage Spain to do so.69 Because of disincentives to trade, goods imported into Spain during the Second World War ran at 35 percent of 1935’s figures. In raw materials, the number was 40 percent of what Spain had imported in 1935. In comparison, Portugal never fell below 70 percent of its prewar level. Only Sweden and Switzerland, surrounded by Axis territory during most of the war, saw similar reductions in imports. Spain’s exports also hovered near 40 percent of 1935 levels, surprisingly low given the demand by both warring sides for Spain’s raw materials. Running a persistent balance of payments deficit of approximately one hundred million, even the surpluses accumulated through trade with Germany did not help, since the Germans were unable to deliver sufficient goods to pay off these amounts. Despite agreements and commercial treaties signed in 1939, 1942, and 1943 with Germany, the last ostensibly in force until November 1944, Spain received little for its exports other than a reduction in its debt to Germany, estimated at $212 million in 1940, but eliminated by the Allied Control Council, then occupying Germany, in 1948.70 Spain’s foreign debt at the end of the civil war was approximately $400 million, almost all of it owed to Germany and Italy for assistance during the conflict. While during the war these figures decreased, through the offsetting costs of the Blue Division, Spanish workers in Germany, and tungsten ore shipments, the debt remained a burden. More important than the foreign debt was Spain’s reluctance to allow foreign financing of any economic measures. In 1939 and 1940, France and the United Kingdom offered significant loans and credits, most of which were rejected by Spain for political reasons, as the Franco regime regarded debts to foreign states as a greater liability than a depressed economy.71 Of course, with the tremendous debt it already owed, the Spanish government was not in a strong position to gain more international credits. Debt service and payments constituted a massive drain on the treasury and formed the second largest item of national expenditures throughout most of the Second World War. The 1940 budget of six billion pesetas

69. Goda, Tomorrow the World, 64–65, 122, 124. 70. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 158–59, 171; Martín Aceña, ed., Los Movimientos de Oro en España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 24, 28–29, 31, 223–24; Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 25. 71. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 211, 214–15.


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demonstrated this fact, as well as showing the fiscal priorities of the regime. The most important items in the official budget were as follows: Budget Category

Amount

Share

Armed Forces:

1.3 billion pesetas 22% (64% Army, 23% Air Force, 13% Navy)

Public debt payments: Interior Ministry

1.2 billion pesetas 825 million pesetas (press, propaganda, internal security)

Public Works Economic Development

450 million pesetas 8% 416 million pesetas 7% (payments to private corporations or investors)

Education Ministry Pensions Justice Ministry

380 million pesetas 297 million pesetas 284 million pesetas

20% 4%

6% 5% 5%

No other budgetary item was more than 250 million pesetas. Even the Falange had a tiny allocation of less than ten million pesetas in that year. Allocations to the military increased after mobilizations in 1940 and 1942, at the expense of other areas.72 Faced with crippling debts, Spain looked for other revenues. In May 1941, Spain agreed to send one hundred thousand Spaniards to work in Nazi industries, partially to repay debts accrued during the civil war. Spanish insistence on favorable terms for their workers and the Germans’ insistence on only taking perfectly healthy Spanish workers limited their pool, as Spain was afflicted with hunger, malnutrition, and even diseases such as tuberculosis. By the end of 1941, only four thousand Spanish workers were in Germany, and the numbers never rose above eight thousand during the war. The primary reason was indelicate Nazi handling of the Spaniards, who had been initially well disposed to work in the Third Reich.73 For example, German employers treated Spaniards not as equals, as guaranteed in their contracts, but as inferior and racially suspect aliens. Nazi officials also routinely provided lesser rations, inferior living conditions, 72. Arriba, June 6, 1940; YA, June 5, 6, 1940. 73. Arriba, June 1, 4, July 31, August 3, 8–10, 24, October 5, 9, 1941; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 128–39.


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less pay, and harsher penalties for errors and absenteeism than Spaniards expected. Additionally, the German government persistently tried to limit access by Spanish diplomats and labor inspectors to its workers, perhaps realizing that this might end the program. These ongoing problems undermined later efforts to recruit more workers, and those who did respond to the extensive campaign were often less healthy and skilled than the Germans wanted.74 Still, the rewards were attractive enough to convince thousands of Spaniards to go to Germany to work. In addition to the 70 to 100 marks per month in official salary after living expenses (equivalent to 280 to 400 pesetas), Spanish workers in the Third Reich could also use their ability to bring coffee, cognac, and other goods into Germany as a way to provide additional black market income for themselves and their families. By the end of 1943, when most of the initial contracts began to expire and the Spanish government made every effort to withdraw its workers, close to twenty-five thousand Spaniards had worked in the Third Reich as part of this program, and some remained to the end of the Second World War.75 Some businessmen had second thoughts about the Franco regime and its economic policies. For example, the international financier Juan March, who had provided the plane, the Dragon Rapide, to fly Franco from the Canary Islands to lead the Nationalist uprising in Morocco in July 1936 and also helped to secure financing during the early months of the civil war, did not remain so enthusiastic. As early as 1938, the pro-British March had expressed to Nationalist leaders his concerns about Falangist ideas on bank reform and syndicalism. Growing increasingly uncomfortable with the statist, autarkic, and unproductive economic measures undertaken by the regime, March moved to Lisbon in 1941.76 More common was the response of employer’s associations, which supported the Nationalist uprising as a guarantee against confiscation of their businesses, seizure of their lands, and union control. The victory of the leftist Popular Front in the February 1936 elections had been particularly upsetting to most industrial leaders. The stock market fell sharply in the following months, with many investors liquidating their holdings and 74. Arriba, May 6, 24, June 3, 7, 1942. 75. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 96–97; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 187–94, 211–13; Arriba, April 2, July 5, November 3, 1939, May 6, 12, 24, June 3, 7, 1942; José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, Los Esclavos Españoles de Hitler. 76. Ramón Garriga, Juan March y su Tiempo, 376, 379, 382–84, 386–87; Richards, A Time of Silence, 107; Pastor Petit, Espionaje: La Segunda Guerra Mundial y España, 515.


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sending them offshore for safekeeping. Many business leaders welcomed the Nationalists as more likely to protect property. With the Nationalist victory, business could claim significant gains. With no minimum wage, no collective bargaining, wide-scale unemployment, and a ban on independent unions and strikes, employers could offer whatever they wanted for salaries and still find willing workers. While wages fell to as low as 70 percent of what they had been in 1936—when wages were already reduced by the effects of the Great Depression—most prices were higher, increasing profits.77 A constant element in the Spanish economy was the black market, in which nearly every Spaniard participated in some way, so that “almost the entire population was breaking the law in some form or another.” Although rationing was necessary to ensure distribution, shortages and the black market had not been significant problems for the Nationalists during the civil war, as their zone contained most of the agriculturally productive areas. The same was not true in the Republican sector, which began rationing in October 1936. With the conquest of urban Madrid and Barcelona in early 1939, the Nationalists took over the burden of feeding the population of both sectors.78 After a brief period of free markets after the Nationalist victory, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce reintroduced rationing on May 18, 1939, along with bans on queuing outside food stores and distribution centers. Ration cards, prices, and most supplies came under the supervision of the Comisaría General de Abastecimientos y Transportes (General Commissariat for Provisions and Transportation). Gasoline was particularly restricted, with even taxis and delivery vehicles allowed only a few liters per month, and government and Falangist offices ordered to reduce their numbers of vehicles. Homes with more than one auto had to choose which one they wanted to use, and no private cars could operate at more than twenty-five horsepower. The regime even promoted the use of gasogene vehicles, which used an unsatisfactory combination of gasoline and wood or coal to produce combustion. Not every food or consumer item was rationed. Fresh and dried fruit, milk, fresh seafood, and most vegetables were available for purchase for those who had sufficient means. However,

77. Mercedes Cabrera, La Patronal ante la II República, 33–35, 262–63, 290, 292, 299, 300, 311; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 97–99; Arriba, November 23, 1940; Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, 264. 78. Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 259; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 14–15.


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controlled prices were kept artificially low, thus decreasing the availability of products on the open market. In some areas, rationing endured until 1952.79 Gasoline was perpetually in short supply during the war years, as a result of Spain’s nearly complete dependence on imports from British and American controlled waters. The worst period for this commodity was in early 1944, when the Allies finally lost patience with Spanish tungsten ore sales to Germany and imposed an oil embargo. New restrictions on gasoline began in February, with a complete ban on sales of gasoline for tourism or pleasure travel. Taxis were limited to forty-five liters per month in Madrid and Barcelona, and only thirty-five elsewhere. Reductions in rationing averaged 40 to 50 percent, with some classes of automobiles and trucks being cut off completely from supplies. During these months, out of forty thousand automobiles in Madrid, only two thousand were on the road on an average day, due to the strict rationing imposed. Even taxis could only drive every other day. With the streets deserted by motor traffic, drivers ignored street signals, and pedestrians walked whenever and wherever they wanted, no longer watching for cars, buses, or trucks.80 The regime, desperate to avoid a complete collapse of its economy, attempted once again to encourage gasogenic conversions, but the public proved resistant to this measure. While fifteen thousand gasogenese were built, this fell short of the government’s expectation of forty thousand, and most of these were official vehicles. While gasogenic vehicles were more fuel-efficient, private citizens did not want to install them on their automobiles. Vehicles with the hybrid engines drove slower and more sluggishly with the apparatus, which was also cumbersome and looked awkward.81 Official ration quantities were small, and barely sufficient to sustain life, much less during the frequent shortages. For example, in one week in March 1940, Barcelona residents officially should have been able to buy, in addition to a small amount of bread and potatoes, three hundred grams of sugar, a quarter liter of olive oil, four hundred grams of garbanzo beans, and one egg. An adult male in an urban area in early 1944 was entitled to purchase a monthly ration of one liter of olive oil, one kilogram of sugar, one kilogram of legumes and rice, six kilos of potatoes, one hundred grams 79. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 19–20, 46, 49; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 140; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 78; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 243; YA, May 14, 28, 1940; Arriba, April 1, 2, May 18, 1939, February 10, May 21, June 9, July 27, August 9, September 6, 1940. 80. Arriba, February 1, 2, 9, 1944. 81. Ibid., March 3, 15, 1944.


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of chocolate, two hundred fifty grams of pasta, plus up to nine kilograms of bread. The only meat available at this time was bacon, or fatty pork, rationed in small amounts. At other times, the state made available small quantities of coffee, biscuits, chocolate, dried cod, fruit preserves, quince, preserved ham, and sausage.82 Spaniards had little choice but to buy in the black market, where prices were much higher but goods were available. Artificially low official prices, import restrictions, and centralized distribution of raw materials led to vast opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to break the law. While the regime argued that the black marketers were forcing it to maintain price controls, it was the artificially low prices, poor quality of rationed goods, and corruption in distribution that made the underground trade necessary and possible. For example, a kilo of sugar officially sold for just fewer than 2 pesetas, but was available on the black market for 20. One liter of olive oil for cooking sold officially for 3.75 pesetas, while on the black market for 30. Wheat flour and bread, officially priced at 1 to 1.5 pesetas per kilogram, routinely sold for 12 pesetas per kilo under the table. Black market prices for bread, sugar, olive oil, and other basic commodities were 400 to 500 percent higher than the official prices, but at least in the black market consumers could actually buy the commodities they wanted.83 While an essential source of food for a hungry population, the black market often posed a health risk, as clandestine butchers were not meticulous about the meat they sold, including sick animals, horses, or rotten meat masked with spices or other flavors. One clandestine butcher in Seville admitted to slaughtering and selling the meat from several thousand cats. Even milk was not safe, as it could be watered down, sometimes as much as 50 percent, or not pasteurized. It was nearly impossible to report such potential harmful actions, as the consumers could also be prosecuted.84 The system of black market and corrupt practices came to be known as estraperlo, a neologism from the term straperlo, a rigged roulette machine used during the Second Republic. The term soon came to mean any corrupt or immoral economic dealings and was a synonym for the black market 82. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 140–41; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 49; Arriba, July 4, 11, 1943, January 11, 30, February 13, 1944, January 31, March 2, May 20, 26, July 3, 16, 1945; YA, February 1, May 2, 1940. 83. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 50; Alicia Sánchez and María Pomés, Historia de Barcelona: De los Orígenes a la Actualidad, 303; Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 244; Catalán, “Autarquía y Desarrollo de la Industria de Fábrica,” 107–9. 84. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 89.


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after the end of the civil war. Despite occasional campaigns against estraperlo, the regime was unsuccessful in ending the practice, especially since the government was unwilling to crack down on the wealthy businessmen who were indispensable to it.85 In some cases, the black market was as large as the official one. This seems to have been the case with wheat and olive oil, both of which had artificially low prices. In the final years of the war, more than 40 percent of the wheat sold in Spain was sold on the black market. There were several reasons why estraperlo grew to such proportions. One was the state’s inability to control ration coupons, which were easy for printers to counterfeit. Another factor was the ability of producers to dilute products. Vendors could claim that meat was not fit for consumption and had to be discarded, but instead sell it for higher prices. It was also nearly impossible to monitor farmers to ensure they did not participate in the black market. While the risks for black marketers were high, with prison sentences or even execution as possibilities, the rewards were also great. Some estraperlistas, especially those with government connections, became rich. Those without access to black market goods had to endure hunger and many long lines to receive their limited rations.86 Another factor making the black market stronger in Spain was the relative lack of movement restrictions. For citizens who had passports, national identity cards, or membership cards in the Falange, there were no limits on internal travel, provided the travelers stayed away from military areas and border regions. Without a need for official travel permission, black marketers could buy in areas of abundance to sell in zones of scarcity. In the few cases when the government was able to improve supplies to enable most to purchase their official rations, black market prices declined quickly.87 The government had an aggressive and visible campaign to eliminate the black market, beginning within a month after the reintroduction of rationing in May 1939. Initially, the regime relied on fines of up to fifty thousand pesetas and publication of arrests to deter practitioners. Even possession of amounts larger than official rations could lead to criminal 85. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 18–19; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 91–92. 86. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 33–35, 36; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 78; Carlos Barciela, “El Mercado Negro de Productos Agrarios en la Posguerra, 1939–1953,” 193–204. 87. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 46; “Informe de la D.G.S. Sobre la Situación Nacional,” Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 74–75.


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charges. It was usually the most egregious actions, such as smuggling, the selling of spoiled meat, watering down milk, or defrauding consumers with overstating the weight of products, that drew the most severe sentences. Even officials were not immune, as when the mayor of Corbera, Valencia, was arrested for selling wood at four hundred pesetas per ton, almost three times the official rate. Falangist leaders, including the Secretary General, issued stern warnings against black marketeering, and most daily newspapers contained stories about the arrest and fines involved in the government crackdown. The regime even opened local offices in major cities where citizens could denounce merchants making illegal sales. Black marketers could even receive the death penalty for the most serious infractions of hoarding and inflated pricing which impeded the “normal development of the national economy.”88 Later measures increased the range of possible sentences, to include sentencing to one of the numerous work battalions engaged in hard labor in construction, mining, and forestry. Those sentenced for black market activities could also receive a permanent ban on participating in commercial activities, even after the completion of their prison terms. To add to the seriousness of these official penalties, these offenses were tried before military tribunals rather than under civilian judges. Many people grumbled, however, that the regime was more interested in making an example of small-scale traders, especially if they had Republican pasts, rather than in prosecuting the large landowners, merchants, and officials who were indispensable to the entire clandestine system. Small farmers and modest cooperatives, which could be watched by the state more closely, had to comply with all the laws and fixed prices for commodities, while larger farms and private large business owners had the maneuverability and large operations to divert substantial amounts of their production to the black market, where prices were typically 250 percent and sometimes as much as 700 percent higher than in the official market.89 In addition to the black market, there was also an explosion of fraud, with scam artists impersonating government officials, army officers, and police to swindle a fearful population. The Falange had to issue a statement in June 1939 insisting that no Falangist officials had the right to extort bribes or payments of any kind, even masked as fees to purchase propa-

88. Arriba, June 8, September 7, October 17, 22, 27, November 3, 5, 8, 11, 1939, January 27, March 17, July 16, 1940, February 4, 8, 1945; YA, October 21, 28, 1941. 89. YA, October 4, 1940, October 29, 1941; Richards, A Time of Silence, 140; Arco Blanco, Las Alas del Ave Fénix, 17–18.


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ganda items. A massive market in forged documents also emerged, such as a network broken in Barcelona in May 1942 that involved more than thirty thousand fake tobacco ration cards. Police also discovered another ring in December 1943. This network, with operatives and counterfeiters throughout Spain, sold fifty thousand fake tobacco ration cards, along with twenty thousand forged coupons for cooking oil and ration cards for thirty thousand liters of gasoline.90 Even the government became a victim of con artists. The most embarrassing was the scheme of an Austrian exile, Alberto Elder von Filek. Filek convinced Franco that he had a formula to make synthetic gasoline based on distilled water, plant juices, and secret elements. Filek received land grants and ten million pesetas to build a factory. He even received a patent, despite his inability to demonstrate his product or interest by international oil companies in the invention. Even Franco’s chauffeur was involved in the swindle, telling the dictator that his official car ran on the mysterious formula. Finally realizing that he had been deceived by von Filek’s fraud, Franco ordered the Austrian imprisoned. Franco also expressed unwarranted optimism in another scheme for solving Spain’s petroleum needs: processing coal and shale into oil and gasoline, a costly and difficult process, which also failed to make a dent in Spain’s dependence on imported fuels. This scheme, though, did not rise to the level of Filek’s swindle.91 One key figure in the Spanish economy was José Antonio Girón, labor minister from 1941 to 1957. Appointed to appease complaints by Falangists that the “pending revolution” was being delayed by conservatives and monarchists, he undertook a major effort to transform the lives of Spanish workers, at least “to the extent that the meager economy permitted.” Girón undertook to gain an understanding of the lives of the working class, visiting miners and construction workers before taking the labor minister office in May 1941. Once in office, Girón paid careful attention to these two industries, sending inspectors to examine health and safety conditions.92 90. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 85–87; Arriba, June 21, 1939, January 28, February 17, 1944. 91. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 99–100; YA, January 7, 1940, May 15, 1942; Vegas Latapie, La Frustración en la Victoria, 311–12; Preston, Franco, 348; Payne, The Franco Regime, 251. 92. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 369; Girón, Si la Memoria no me Falla, 85; “Informe del Ministerio de Trabajo Sobre la Insalubridad de las Minas de Almaden,” 1943, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 31–38.


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An ardent Falangist and camisa vieja, Girón was the most prominent advocate of revolutionary policies, urging “more bread and fewer words,” which gained him popularity among some elements of the working classes who appreciated his gruff honesty and hard work. In the first three years of his administration, he introduced a wide range of welfarestate measures to improve conditions for workers: family subsidies, interestfree loans for families with children, accident insurance, housing projects, a minimum of seven paid vacation days, expansion of retirement funding, and health insurance for workers and their families. While some of these reforms had been introduced under the Second Republic, Girón pushed for additional funding and broader application, funded through mandatory assessments on private business. In any case, all Republican legislation and laws introduced during the civil war were canceled in April 1939, soon after the end of the conflict.93 To what should we attribute the abysmal failure of the Spanish economy to grow and provide a basic level of subsistence for its people? Some of this weakness can be attributed to the destruction of the civil war, but the primary responsibility rested with the Franco regime’s poor economic stewardship. Because of its policies, Spain benefited less from trade during the Second World War than any other neutral nation and far less than it had during the First World War, when Spain’s more authentic neutrality allowed it to trade extensively with both sides.94 Wages remained low during the Second World War. Annual per capita income declined from almost 6,500 pesetas in 1940 to 5,700 in 1945. The authorized minimum wage for an urban day laborer was a paltry 9.4 pesetas daily, but employers frequently violated even this low standard. Workers above the apprentice level earned between 11 and 22 pesetas daily, or between 200 and 500 monthly. A coal miner in Asturias, for example, could expect to earn about 14 pesetas per day. Monthly salaries for skilled and office workers were 500 to 900 monthly. A secretary could expect to earn 200 pesetas every month, with entry-level managers being paid 500. Entrylevel civil service employees earned just under 300 pesetas monthly, while the highest-ranking ministerial executives could make 1,500. Government 93. José Antonio Girón, La Obra Social de la Nueva España, 1, 6; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 150; Arriba, April 2, 1939, July 23, 1940, May 3, 1942; YA, September 21, 1941, November 30, 1943. 94. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 28, 59, 61, 77, 80; Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 44.


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jobs, of which there were more than half a million, were particularly desirable because of their security in a difficult market. Despite the indispensability of the military to the regime, a lieutenant or junior naval officer was paid only 300 pesetas per month.95 Other than high-ranking officers, active-duty military personnel made little, but once they left service they could count on hiring assistance. Those who had served in the Nationalist armed forces during the Spanish Civil War received preference for government jobs, with 80 percent of civil service positions reserved for war veterans, former prisoners of the Popular Front, and others who had suffered because of Republican actions during the war. While thousands of veterans elbowed each other to gain these prized government sinecures, Francisco Franco’s monthly salary as head of state was the princely sum of almost 60,000 pesetas, plus payments for his being a captain general in the army, commander-in-chief of the military, and leader of the Falange.96 Even with low wages, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards remained unemployed. While the regime admitted 500,000 were jobless in 1940, down from well over 1,500,000 in 1939, these numbers did not include those unable to register with the Sindicatos because of their politically questionable pasts. One normal penalty for those who had been associated with Socialist, Communist, anarchist, or other Republican forces was a ban on employment, leaving perhaps hundreds of thousands without a way to earn a legal wage. The official unemployment statistics also did not take into account the hundreds of thousands of underemployed workers, especially in agriculture, who could only find work a few months out of the year, such as on the latifundios of Andalusia.97 Expenses greatly outstripped official salaries. An inexpensive one- or two-bedroom apartment in Madrid could run 200 to 300 pesetas monthly, in an environment in which the average working-class man earned around 300 pesetas monthly. A decent suit could cost 100 pesetas, a small bar of rationed chocolate 8 pesetas, and even a basic meal at a working-class restaurant could run 4 pesetas. Official prices per kilogram in 1941 were 95. Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 21–23, 147–50; Ramón Garriga, La España de Franco, vol. 2, 103; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 47; Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, 263; YA, January 2, 1940; Richards, A Time of Silence, 143; Carreras, “Depresión Económica y Cambio Estructural,” 13. 96. Francisco Moreno, “La Represión en la Posguerra,” in Santos Julía Díaz, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, 360; Preston, Franco, 346; Payne, The Franco Regime, 232. 97. Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 140; Richards, A Time of Silence, 108–9; Payne, The Franco Regime, 253.


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as follows: bread 1.5 pesetas, pork 18.5, fish 9, rice 1.9, potatoes 0.9, eggs 14, coffee 19, milk 1.5, and sugar 3 pesetas. At official prices, a family of four could feed itself for 15 pesetas per day, when the rationed goods were available, but these prices meant that unskilled laborers had no legal way to provide for themselves and their dependents. Even if both parents had jobs (unlikely as married women were not supposed to work), it was nearly impossible to find enough food, since waiting in lines for rations could be a full-time job.98 Those unable to feed themselves had to resort to the public kitchens of Auxilio Social, which provided more than a million daily meals and as many as fifty million monthly on a national level in almost four thousand centers. These meals were funded by collections on the “día del plato único” (Day of the Single Plate). All restaurants, from the most humble working-class café to the Ritz Hotel, were subject to this policy of July 1939. By this order, instead of serving the normal two-plate meal, proprietors could only serve one plate at lunch on Thursdays. Customers paid full price, and the difference for the phantom second plate went to Auxilio Social to pay for its public kitchens. There was no change in a la carte prices, so for those with sufficient funds, it meant another expense. Although there is no evidence for this, it seems likely that restaurants did not have a thriving business on Thursdays after this decree was issued.99 Some workers were fortunate enough to have a midday meal provided by their employers, but even these company kitchens were not able to guarantee the availability of food. The Red Cross also undertook to feed the hungry in Spain, providing meals for as many as twenty thousand madrileños in the summer of 1941, but these temporary measures did not address the systematic hunger in Spain, a condition that would endure in some form until the early 1950s.100 Spain’s pro-Axis policies had a direct impact on the willingness of the United States and United Kingdom to trade with it after 1940. In 1941, Spain’s dispatch of the Blue Division and Spanish workers to Germany led to a significant reduction of petroleum shipments from the United States. In 1940, Spain had used one million tons of oil, almost all of it imported. For all of 1941, Spain’s oil imports were only 25 percent of what 98. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 46–47; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 75–76, 98–99; Caprarella, Madrid durante el Franquismo, 145–46; YA, December 17, 1943. 99. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 37; Arriba, July 30, 1939; YA, July 30, 1939. 100. Richards, A Time of Silence, 121, 143.


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they had been in 1935, a crippling reduction that nearly paralyzed Spain’s road and transportation network. In 1942, Spain was only permitted to import 350,000 tons, a slight improvement but nonetheless insufficient for normal economic activity. Not until 1946 did imports return to the 1940 level. Because of the lack of gasoline, few buses ran, leaving only the tram and subway systems in the major cities as available means of transportation, both of which saw intensive growth during this period. A shortage of cars, however, meant that public transportation was usually late and overloaded, and often people rode without paying even the reduced fares introduced by the regime. A new double-decker bus line, inaugurated in Madrid in June 1940, had to be canceled in August because of severe gasoline shortages caused by Allied limitations on Spain’s oil imports.101 Spain also suffered dramatic shortages in generating electricity. Even though almost 90 percent of energy use was coal-based, shortages of electrical components often hindered production. Electric power outages were regular occurrences, especially in 1944 and thereafter. Between 1936 and 1944, there was a 55 percent increase in demand on the electrical grid, but almost no new power plants or improved efficiencies. Attempted electricity use typically exceeded supply by 10 percent, leading to overloads, brownouts, and even blackouts. In 1945 there was a 33 percent shortage, while even as late as 1949 there was a 27 percent shortfall. Until 1951, the regime prohibited energy companies from raising prices, thereby reducing incentives to invest in more production. In some parts of the country, production actually declined. An ongoing drought, which had a severe impact on agriculture, also hurt hydroelectric generation. Spain remained behind the rest of Western Europe in electrification and construction of its power grid, in absolute numbers and per capita, producing just more than three thousand kilowatt hours per year, or 140 kilowatt hours per inhabitant, leaving it far below the production of the United Kingdom, Italy, or France.102 Electricity shortages became worse in 1944, with the ongoing drought and limitations on petroleum shipments by the Allies. Cuts in electricity, in some cases as much as 75 percent, were so severe that businesses had to 101. Catalán, La Economía Española y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 221; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 142; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 51; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 57; Arriba, March 24, June 21, August 2, 1940, March 22, 1944, January 18, 1945. 102. Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 50–51; Catalán, “Autarquía y Desarrollo de la Industria de Fábrica,” 77–78; Arriba, July 14, 1943, July 13, 1945.


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turn off electrical signs and ads at night and stop using power after 7 p.m. As an additional measure, every business had to close at least one day per week. In 1945 the problem worsened, with a continuation of the ban on electrified ads. There were also sporadic daytime cuts in power and a 50 percent reduction in power available for home use. Entertainment venues, such as movies and theaters, could only have nine shows per week, and were subject to 50 percent reductions from 1944’s already low levels. Restaurants, bars, and cafes had to continue operating with a 25 percent cut in power. Violators of the rules could have their electricity completely cut for fifteen days. These restrictions were so severe that the regime promised to pay workers five-sixths of the wages they lost because of governmentordered power shortages.103 In electronic and electrical parts, although not in the production of electricity, Spain made remarkable gains, increasing its manufacturing of these components dramatically by 1944 over 1935 figures. The rates of increase were particularly high in motors (193 percent), transformers (240 percent), electrical meters (250 percent), and radios (333 percent). Production levels for durable consumer goods, such as ovens, stoves, heaters, irons, and fans, also rose significantly. Of course, these products put additional pressure on an already strained electrical grid, but their rising production levels were nonetheless one of the few achievements of the regime during the Second World War.104 Inflation was also a serious problem in wartime Spain. Using 1936 as the baseline of 100, by 1942 the official cost of living had increased to 247.4, while rates taking into account the black market prices of commodities were even higher. The Bank of Spain, controlled by Franco’s Treasury ministry, maintained cheap money policies in the 1940s, with a discount rate of approximately 3 percent. The regime also introduced an ambitious public workers program in August 1939, leading to large deficits, and maintained a regressive tax system throughout the Second World War. The result of these policies was an economy characterized by “government interventionism, the pursuit of autarky, and acute inflation accompanied by stagnating production.” From 1941 to 1945, wholesale prices increased more than 10 percent annually.105

103. Arriba, February 13, 1944, January 24, August 9, 1945. 104. Catalán, “Autarquía y Desarrollo de la Industria de Fábrica,” 68. 105. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 26, 28–29, 33; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 68; Carreras, “Depresión Económica y Cambio Estructural,” 9.


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The regime exacerbated inflation with arbitrary salary increases for some industries, which neglected other areas and added to economic disparities between rich and poor and between skilled and unskilled workers. In just one month, July 1940, the regime ordered 15 to 75 percent wage increases in the leather, chemical, and clothing manufacturing industries, along with the merchant marine. The next year, responding to a petition by the Syndicate of Paper, Press, and Graphic Arts, newspapers in Madrid agreed to up to 30 percent increases in the salaries of their workers.106 With the approaching end of the conflict, the official position of the Spanish government was that peace would “permit Spain to normalize its economy,” reducing commercial restrictions imposed by the Allies. During the last few months of World War II and thereafter, Spain attempted to normalize its trade relations, selling several million cases of oranges to the United States and Britain, signing a civilian airline agreement with the United States, and allowing U.S. military transports to land at Madrid’s airport. It also signed trade agreements with France, Switzerland, and Sweden.107 After the end of the Second World War, Spain paid the price for Franco’s flirtation with the Axis. Regarding the Spanish government as a creature of the Axis, the states of Western Europe, many of which had influential socialist parties, were not friendly to Franco in the late 1940s. Still, while diplomatic ties were frayed, economic ones continued, with Spain providing 10 percent of all food imported into Marshall Plan nations, being a vital provider of oranges, bananas, tomatoes, and olive oil, along with tin, lead, mercury, and other minerals for the reviving industries of Western Europe. Spain also signed trade agreements with Portugal, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and even with the Allied Control Council in Germany. Aside from the closing of the French border in February 1946, a condition that endured until 1948, there were no significant economic sanctions imposed on Spain in the immediate postwar period, despite diplomatic isolation and exclusion from the United Nations.108 Even with these trade opportunities, the Spanish economy limped along in the mid to late 1940s. No longer able to charge above-market rates for

106. Arriba, April 29, 1940, July 17, 27, 31, 1940. 107. Ibid., March 18, 22, 23, April 19, 26, May 9, June 17, 19–20, 23, 26, July 8, 10, September 7, 16, 1945. 108. Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 4, 11–13, 16, 19, 21, 28, 35– 36, 52, 139, 189, 201.


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its exports, particularly tungsten ore, Spain suffered a great financial crisis in the postwar period, enduring “crucial shortages of basic foodstuffs, raw materials and capital goods.” The regime was able to avoid mass starvation, but only because Argentina under President Juan Domingo Perón granted it $264 million in credits with which to buy food from the Latin American nation. Even these credits came at a high price, as Argentina sold its wheat, corn, and beef to Spain at close to double the international market prices.109 Spain did collaborate with the Allies at the end of the war in the confiscation of Axis assets. On May 5, 1945, Spain agreed to follow Resolution Six of the Bretton Woods Agreement, by which it promised to transfer to the Allies all property belonging to the Axis, its nationals, and corporations. It closed all remaining German and other Axis embassies and consulates and transferred title to these locations to the Allies. However, the Spanish government did not participate in this process with enthusiasm or speed. Of the 509.6 million pesetas in German assets liquidated, the Allies received 400.7 million and the Spanish government 108.9 million.110 The autarkic phase of the Spanish economy began to change around 1950, but until that time the industrial capacity and agricultural system languished in “a period of economic stagnation, of blind adherence to the goal of autarky and of extensive government regulations and strict control of any form of economic activity.” Due to its belief in fostering self-sufficiency, the fiscal and industrial decisions of the Franco regime, calculated to prevent foreign products and foreign ideas from dominating the Spanish economy, had resulted in more than a decade of lost time. Rather than forging a powerful national economy, by 1945 Spain had made almost no progress in agriculture and most industries, and despite great potential, still suffered from shortages of food, electricity, and petroleum.111 In its public declarations, the regime continued to promote revolutionary National Syndicalism to the end of the Second World War. In practice, however, its economic efforts strengthened the traditional banking, 109. Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 19; Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 83, 197; Harrison, The Spanish Economy from the Civil War to the European Community, 19; Arriba, February 9, 1941. 110. Martín Aceña, Los Movimientos de Oro en España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 229–31; Arriba, May 10, July 16, 1945; YA, June 4, 1944. 111. Lieberman, Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 17; Richards, A Time of Silence, 96–97.


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industrial, landowning, and financial elites, at the expense of the rural population and urban working class. Aside from modest welfare state reforms, implemented almost exclusively by Labor Minister José Antonio Girón, the Falangist “pending revolution” of “national solidarity” for all never arrived, and Spain remained a poor nation until the 1960s.112

112. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 328–29.


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Chapter 5 Culture and Leisure

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he overwhelming desire of the Spanish people in 1939, after almost three years of terrible internal conflict, was to recover normal lives. Even those who had supported the Spanish Republic welcomed the peace that followed the destructive war, in some cases warmly greeting the Nationalists who occupied their cities. Evidence of this attitude came again at the end of the Second World War, when many villages that had been strongholds of Republican and Leftist belief before 1939 turned against the Communist and anarchist maquis who began infiltrating into Spain beginning in 1944. The indifference or even hostility toward these guerrillas—locals routinely summoned police when the insurgents entered their villages—signaled the war-weariness of the Spaniards, who feared above all the “strife and hardship” that a new civil war would bring. They wished “nothing more than to eat and be left alone.”1 While political repression, international uncertainties, and economic suffering made a return to normalcy a challenge, most did try to resume the nonpolitical activities that had occupied their days and nights before July 18, 1936: work, family, and leisure activities. The conclusion of the Spanish Civil War allowed for a revival of popular culture and entertainment, and although these activities were limited by the ideological and 1. U.S. Military History Institute, Office of Strategic Services, Donovan Papers, Report, March 12, 1942, “Current Attitudes in Spain”; José Antonio Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 339; Fernando Díaz-Plaja, Anecdotario de la España Franquista, 25.

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political mandates of the Franco regime, nonetheless a vibrant and participatory culture did reemerge during the Second World War. While much of this activity was a revival of pre–civil war traditions, there were also pastimes that were new or transformed. Despite the economic difficulties following the civil war, Spaniards still spent more than six hundred million pesetas on motion pictures, theater, sporting events, and other spectacles in 1940, the first full year of peace.2 While the Spanish government hoped to develop a new society, the Franco regime’s ambivalence in this area prevented any coherent vision of culture from pervading daily life. While representatives of the Catholic Church urged traditionalism and cultural conservatism, Falangists supported more modernist ideas. The practical realities of the Second World War and the regime’s limited resources also minimized the possibilities of a unified vision. Lacking sufficient funds to support a renaissance of distinctively Spanish and Nationalist literature, cinema, and sports, the Franco regime tolerated a significant foreign presence. Unable to manage or afford a unified cultural transformation, the state fell back onto the limited tools of authoritarianism: import duties, limited aid to favored activities, and censorship. As a whole, Spaniards welcomed the chance to relax and think about pursuits other than politics. Even though the regime attempted to suffuse its political ideology into everyday life, passive entertainment became an increasingly apolitical refuge for its subjects, with football teams and matadors standing in for the public participation that had been normal during the Spanish Republic. When most Spaniards spent their time and limited financial resources on entertainment, they chose anything but activities with a pro-fascist or authoritarian resonance. Under the Franco regime, art, entertainment, and even athletic competition were supposed to exalt Catholic spiritual values and nationalism. Although Falangists never developed a coherent and specific vision of culture, art, or entertainment, they did share with other Nationalists the idea that real art had not existed under the Republican regime, nor could it under any similar system. Given their belief that the Republican state was Marxist-inspired, this convinced Nationalists that under it the creative process had not had a proper moral expression. To avoid these dangers, the Falange introduced censorship to limit the possibility of dangerous influences.3 Censorship at first came under the supervision of the Interior Ministry (1939–1941), then the Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular de la Falange 2. Ecclesia, April 15, 1941. 3. Angels Llorente, Arte e Ideología en el Franquismo (1936–1951), 29, 31, 34.


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(1941–1945), and after the war the Ministry of Education (1946–1951). Everything published, displayed, broadcast, staged, filmed, printed, or performed was subject to censorship. Given the uncertain prospect of approval, many authors and creators operated under self-censorship, not completing or submitting works they knew would not pass the process. Even personal letters could be read and censored, and the regime directed that senders should not seal the envelopes they mailed, to make it easier for the censors to read them. All letters and telegrams had to be written in Spanish for the same reason.4 In book publishing, censorship was lighter than in other fields, although over the years the regime created a list of three thousand banned books. In most cases, manuscripts were read by only one or two censors, which meant that some innovative works could find their way to the market. Occasionally books could be published despite the opposition of important sectors, even of the church. One example of this phenomenon was the successful 1942 novel La Familia de Pascual Duarte, written by Camilo José Cela. Cela’s novel centers on a poor man, under a death sentence for murder, who all his life had been constrained by an archaic moral code revolving around defense of his honor. The church did not like the novel’s dark subject or its lack of a redemptive conclusion and succeeded in temporarily blocking the second edition. Despite this opposition, Pascual Duarte sold out its first edition of three thousand, and in 1945 another edition of five thousand. Over the years following its publication, this novel became the most successful fictional work in Spain since Don Quixote. Other successful books during World War II were the poetic text Hijos de la Ira (Sons of Wrath) by Dámaso Alonso and Nada (Nothing) by Carmen Laforet, both published in 1944. Alonso’s poetry focused on the dismal conditions of the postwar period, with death, God, and existentialism as themes, while the novel Nada portrayed the anguished life of a young girl in Barcelona, constrained by limited choices, hunger, and an unsettling network of friends and relatives. Neither book was explicitly political or dissident, and so both were able to survive censorship despite reflecting the miseries of daily life in Spain during World War II.5

4. Hans-Jörg Neuschäfer, Adiós a la España Eternal, 48–49; Arriba, April 2, October 12, 1939. 5. Publio López Mondéjar, 150 Years of Photography in Spain, 177; Neuschäfer, Adiós a la España Eternal, 89–90; Jordi Gracia García and Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco (1939–1975): Cultura y Vida Cotidiana, 146–47. “Camilo José Cela,” The Economist, January 26, 2002; Pedro Laín Entralgo, Descargo de Conciencia, 303. Cela won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1989.


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The regime also had to cope with foreign intervention in censorship. An example of this came in December 1940, when the German Embassy attempted to withdraw from publication Poesías en la Mano (Poetry at Hand), by the German Jewish émigré Franz Werfel. Claiming that Werfel was “clearly Leftist,” the Germans asked that the Spanish government withdraw this translated book of poems from bookstores and libraries, “in the spirit of close and friendly collaboration between Spain and Germany.” The German embassy also referred to the unratified cultural treaty between the two nations, asking that Spain act in accord with this agreement, banning as it did publication in each nation of works antithetical to the other. This request came despite Poesías en la Mano having been approved by Spanish censors and having found a publisher, Editorial Yunque.6 The Foreign Ministry, to which the German request had gone, replied that the Falange authorized “that publication in accord with the legal dispositions regulating that subject and believes that the material of the same is completely apart from any political issue.” At the same time, Spain argued that Germany continued to publish nonpolitical works by anti-Francoist exiles, and that similar books were also published by Spanish editorial houses without any problems. In the end, the Falange and Foreign Ministry did not yield to German pressure, most likely because Werfel’s book was already in circulation, and Germany did not have a strong argument against it remaining so, other than the author’s Jewish heritage and current residence in the United States.7 The state tried to encourage writing and publishing, allowing the new academic and literary journal Escorial to publish. In December 1940 this publication became the focal point for Falangist “high culture,” and in its pages included articles and essays by most of Spain’s prominent writers not in exile. It represented an effort by Falangists to spearhead the “intellectual reconstruction of Spain” after the destructiveness of the civil war. Franco also authorized the creation of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas—CSIC (High Council for Scientific Research) in November 1939 to support scientific and humanities investigations. However, the research was subordinate to the teachings of the church, and CSIC very quickly became known for the prominence of members of Opus Dei,

6. AMAE, LegR 1724, Expediente 10, Verbal Notes, December 29, 1940, and February 26, 1941, German Embassy to Spanish Foreign Ministry. 7. AMAE, LegR 1724, Expediente 4, Letters, March 1941–February 1942, between Spanish Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, and Vice Secretary for Popular Education (Falange).


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an archconservative lay Catholic order, within its organization. Another new state body, the Instituto de Estudios Políticos, engaged in more direct political work, publishing the journal Revista de Estudios Políticos as a forum to present the ideology of the regime.8 The state also created two ten-thousand-peseta book prizes, the “Francisco Franco” award for books of history or essays, and the “José Antonio Primo de Rivera” prize for poetry or novels. The topics changed every year, with the 1940 competition focusing the Franco prize on “National Reconstruction,” while the Primo de Rivera award had the theme “The Catholicism of the Falange.” Nazi Germany also introduced a book prize for Spanish writers, offering financial awards of five thousand and fifteen hundred pesetas for contemporary works on German or Hispano-German problems.9 The 1941 Francisco Franco award went to José María de Areilza and Fernando María Castiella, for their work Reinvindicaciones de España (Spanish Claims). In this book, “perhaps the most influential and successful piece of wartime propaganda” in Spain, the authors argued that Britain and France had been responsible for Spain’s diminished colonial opportunities, as well as for the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Spain’s empire in North Africa, according to Areilza and Castiella, should consist of “Gibraltar, a protectorate over all Morocco, the Oran district of northwestern Algeria, expansion in equatorial Africa at the expense of British Nigeria and French possessions, and a slice of French Northwest Africa to connect these territories.” In addition to winning a prestigious prize, this work provided an academic foundation for the imperial ambitions of the Spanish government, and became widely read among the foreign policy establishment.10 Antonio Tovar Llorente, a Falangist professor of Latin and classics, subsecretary of Propaganda in the Falange, and during the civil war the director of Franco’s radio network, wrote his own justification of Spain’s imperial travails, which like Reinvindicaciones de España sold out multiple editions during World War II. In El Imperio de España (The Spanish Empire), Tovar argued that the future belonged to the powerful nations and that Spaniards had “the fortune to belong to a nation made to rule,” waiting for the time 8. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 318; Laín Entralgo, Descargo de Conciencia, 283; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 374, 389–90, 399–400; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 176–77, 182–83; Arriba, October 8, November 25, 1939. 9. YA, May 30, 1940; Arriba, January 1, 1943. 10. Payne, The Franco Regime, 278–79; Arriba, April 27, 1941; Nerín and Bosch, El Imperio que Nunca Existió, 41; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 207.


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in the near future in which “all fiction of freedom for the tiny national states is going to disappear.”11 Another popular book was Italia, Fuera de Combate (Italy, Out of Combat), by Ismael Herráiz, foreign correspondent for Arriba. This late 1944 work, which sold out seventeen editions to become one of the best-selling Spanish nonfiction books of the Second World War, was an account of the collapse of Mussolini’s regime. Even today it is considered well written and holds a “strange literary attractiveness,” but its popularity came also from its portrayal of the fall of a totalitarian regime not unlike the Francoist state. Although Herráiz himself was very pro-Axis and even pro-Fascist, the undeniably abject failure of the Italian dictatorship, a model for Franco’s New State, could not be hidden in an accurate account of the events of 1942–1944. The sympathy of the author for the fallen Fascist state was clear, however, which, along with his Falangist pedigree, might explain the ability of the book to pass through censorship, despite its implicit subversiveness.12 While some books such as these did concern politics, most published works were fiction, and there was never much of an effort to direct authors toward political writing. Out of the 283 books published in September 1941, for example, 64 were novels and 41 were educational works, with only a handful having an explicitly Falangist ideological message. Spain did allow Germany and the United Kingdom to present exhibitions of their books and publishing industries, but there were few imported volumes sold during the war, and the Spanish government banned direct propaganda by either side, although it was hardly even-handed in its enforcement of this policy. More important was the Fiesta del Libro, an annual book sale conducted in the Retiro park in Madrid by Spanish publishers and booksellers, and featuring discounts and book signings by famous authors. Of course, excluded from this literary production were those intellectuals who had chosen exile, many of whom refused to return to Spain until after Franco died, some out of fear and others out of opposition to the regime. Particularly in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Mexico, these writers produced significant works and contributed in many fields.13 The closest to a Falangist style in artistic expression came in the field of architecture, where neoclassical lines and gigantism prevailed, inspired by 11. Antonio Tovar, El Imperio de España, 106–7; Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 79; Arriba, December 15, 1940, February 17, July 28, November 29, 1942. 12. José-Carlos Mainer, “La Segunda Guerra Mundial y la Literature Española,” 247–50. 13. De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 362; Arriba, April 22, 1939, June 23, November 24, December 5, 1940, November 27, 1942, May 11, 1944; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 187–98.


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Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. To the Falange, “neoclassical” meant severe, rigid, geometric, and represented order, serenity, clarity, and balance. One of the early efforts to renovate Madrid came with an order in April 1939 that property owners had to paint over, black out, tear down, or remove political posters, signs, emblems, or other insignia or slogans associated with the Republicans or the Popular Front. With a German architecture exhibition in Madrid and Barcelona in 1942, and ample coverage of Nazi building projects in Spanish publications, German influence in this field was significant. Franco even attended the opening of the exhibition in Madrid, at the Retiro park, which featured thirty-four drawings and largescale models of buildings planned for the New Germany, including several by Albert Speer, Hitler’s personal architect. Nazi illustrated magazines, such as Adler and Signal, also gave German architecture a prominent image in Spain. Most of the projects dreamed of by the Falange never made it into being because of budget shortfalls, although the buildings and grounds of the University City in Madrid did receive significant new construction and rebuilding of damaged structures before reopening in October 1939. The most important example of this neoclassical style was the Air Force Ministry building, built during World War II in the Moncloa district. At a cost of one hundred million pesetas, the Air Ministry rose on the former site of the Cárcel Modelo, where many Falangists and other Nationalists had been interned during the civil war until the prison was destroyed by Franco’s forces. For all of the grandiose architectural dreams of Falangists, a bitter reality remained: even by official estimates, in 1940 seven million Spaniards, out of a total population of twenty-six million, lived in intolerably substandard housing, in homes without running water, electricity, or a roof.14 Another important construction of the regime was the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), a vast cemetery and basilica begun on April 1, 1940, and partially blasted out of the side of a granite mountain. Built by forced labor, mostly Republican political prisoners from the Spanish Civil War, the monument had at its summit a massive 150-meter-high cross, the base of which had huge stone statues of the Four Evangelists. Towering angels bearing swords guarded the basilica, which would become the final resting place for thousands of war dead (initially only Nationalists) as well as José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. Inspired by Franco’s vision and managed by Pedro Muguruza Otaño, Spain’s most prominent architect, 14. Arriba, April 23, October 24, 1939, April 16, 1940, May 6–8, 1942; YA, October 1, November 2, 1943; Llorente, Arte e Ideología en el Franquismo, 54, 57, 65, 71–72, 75, 98–99.


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the site took twenty years to complete, instead of the twelve months originally planned in 1940. Even with dynamite, blasting and carving into a granite mountain were formidable tasks. The monument’s design was supposed to inspire generations of Spaniards about the sacrifices of the Nationalists during the civil war.15 The reopening of museums was also an example of the return to normalcy. During the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans in Madrid protected many of the nation’s art treasures, placing paintings, public fountains, sculptures, and other important pieces under sandbags, in bunkers, or in more secure locations in other countries. The Prado, for example, Spain’s most important museum of painting, reopened on July 7, 1939, but with more than 150 pieces of the collection still in Geneva, where they had been sent in September 1936. Two months after the museum reopened, the Swiss sent the paintings back on a special chartered train. One of the achievements in this field during the war was the expansion of the public viewing areas within the Prado, which in 1942 opened eight new exhibition rooms.16 In addition to reopening preexisting museums, research institutions, and archives including the Prado, Real Academia de Historia, and the National Archeological Museum, the regime also created the Servicio Histórico Militar (Military Historical Service), initially to document the tactical and strategic victories won by the Nationalists in the civil war. As in other areas, the Germans were one of the most important models, such as when the National Health Delegation, led by Blue Division veteran and medical doctor Agustín Aznar, sponsored a photographic exhibition in the Retiro dedicated to German anatomy, physiology, and hygiene. Spain also invited the Germans to exhibit their artisanal production at an exhibition in Barcelona, which featured ceramic, furniture, crystal, and other handcrafted German products.17 The end of the war allowed for the gradual return of athletic competition. Athletics also was part of the public image of the Falange and state, allowing the regime to illustrate its contributions to Spanish life and the restoration of normalcy through identification and legitimation by players. The Spanish government believed, as did the totalitarian regimes of Central

15. Arriba, April 2–3, 1940; Preston, Franco, 351–52; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 134. 16. YA, July 4, September 3, 1939; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 138; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 376. 17. Arriba, April 9, July 15, November 11, 1939; YA, December 21, 1943, June 15, 1944.


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and Eastern Europe, that sports promoted civic virtue and the glory of the state. In Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Francoist Spain, “sport became an integral part of the performative language of fascism,” and in Spain it was a key element of “national rebirth.” In keeping with the martial emphasis of the regime, some sports that received encouragement were ones that prepared Spanish youth for war or allowed Spain to participate in international competition with other authoritarian and fascist regimes, such as skiing and gymnastics.18 Spanish youth and university athletes competed at the Hitler Youth Winter Games in Garmisch, Germany, in February and March 1941, joining German, Italian, Slovak, Yugoslavian, Swedish, and Dutch participants in an event compared by the Spanish press to the Olympics. The previous winter, Germany was to have hosted the 1940 Winter Olympics at the same location, but the International Olympic Committee canceled the games because of the war. A similar fate befell the summer 1940 games that had been scheduled in Helsinki and the 1944 contests in the United Kingdom (summer) and Italy (winter). Nonetheless, the Germans staged games in 1939 and 1940 and in subsequent years for its athletes and those from its satellite nations.19 Even the seven-hundred-strong German colegio (high school) in Madrid became an ideologically correct inspiration, with its Hitler Youth section and its serious attention to physical education as a prerequisite for service to the Third Reich. The Franco regime imitated many aspects of the Hitler Youth in their programs for the Frente de Juventudes and SEU, including summer camps run by the military to instill a martial and athletic spirit in university and high school students.20 As early as the civil war, Franco had assigned responsibility for athletics to the Falange, appointing General José Moscardó, hero of the Siege of the Alcázar, as leader of the National Council for Sports. While from his military experience Moscardó was very familiar with horses and shooting sports, the general did not know much about athletics. He continued with this responsibility after the war ended and made it his priority to change the ideological content of Spanish athletics. Admitting his need to learn about his new area of responsibility, in April 1939, just weeks after the end 18. John London, “Competing Together in Fascist Europe: Sport in Early Francoism,” in Günter Berghaus, ed., Fascism and Theater, 229, 232; Antonio Izquierdo and Juan Blanco, Memoria de Juventud: Elegia por la Generación Perdida, 210–14. 19. Arriba, June 11, July 6, August 29, September 12, 1939, January 28, February 4, 1940, February 21, March 12, 1941. 20. Marca, June 24, August 8, 1943.


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of the civil war, he made a political pilgrimage to the European sporting center: Berlin. He was present in the Nazi capital to celebrate the birthday of Hitler and signed an accord. Returning from this mission with cooperative agreements with the Germans and Italians, he intensified the political content of Spanish sports and established strong ties with other sporting federations throughout fascist and authoritarian Europe.21 Moscardó became the first chief of the Delegación Nacional de Deportes—DND (National Sports Delegation), created on February 22, 1941, as a branch of the Falange. The DND had complete authority over all athletic activity, with the ability to hire, fire, or discipline anyone in any sports capacity. Staffing the National Sports Council entirely with military officers, Moscardó hoped to imitate the discipline of German athletics. Replacing the color red with Falangist blue in uniforms, the general also ordered a fascist salute at the beginning of every competition. In late 1942 the Germans proposed the creation of a European Sport League, which would incorporate the states supportive of the New Order. Although embraced by Moscardó, and the subject of negotiations between prospective member states, this organization did not come to fruition, but was swept away in the fading Axis prospects for victory in 1943 and 1944.22 Anti-regionalism was also a key element of the new athletic policy, with traditional Basque and Catalan words struck from team names and banned from practice fields and stadia. These restrictions on sports vocabulary paralleled the more general ban on the use of non-Castellano words, especially Basque and Catalan, but also English, French, or other foreign languages, in the names of businesses and organizations. This was a phenomenon not just confined to sports. Even seemingly innocuous names had to change to accommodate the new regime. “Russian salad” became “National salad,” and even the Hotel Inglés had to transform itself into the Hotel Imperio.23 Football (American soccer) was the most popular sport in every regard: it had the greatest number of professional and amateur teams, and the largest budgets and attendance. On a typical Sunday, more than four hun21. Duncan Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 32; Marca, July 9, 1943; Arriba, April 26, 1939, March 8, 1941. 22. AMAE, LegR1724, Expediente 61, Letters, October 7–13, 1942, between Spanish Foreign Ministry and Delegación Nacional de Deportes (Falange); Teresa Gonzalez Aja, “Spanish Sports Policy in Republican and Fascist Spain,” 105–6. 23. London, “Competing Together,” 233–34; Real Federación Española de Fútbol, 1913– 1988, 446. Spain returned to its traditional FIFA uniform, blue shorts and red shirts, on March 2, 1947, in a game against Ireland. Carlos Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 64–65. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 93; Fernando Vizcaíno Casas, La España de la Posguerra, 18.


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dred thousand spectators — or 2 percent of the Spanish population — attended First Division football games, with the largest stadium, Las Corts, in Barcelona, seating forty thousand. Because of shortages in playing fields for other sports, football was also the only sport accessible to the working classes, as it could be played in any field or street. The Falange organized sixteen regional football leagues throughout Spain, with a total of more than twelve hundred teams.24 Unlike the broad base for football, only members of elite clubs could typically expect to have access to swimming pools, tennis courts, or the specialized fields or equipment required for many sports. During the civil war, most of the best football players were in the Republican zone, in large part because many of them were on vacation in the Basque country in July 1936 when the conflict began and did not choose to enter the Nationalist zone during or after the war.25 Additionally, many of the teams had a regional identity before the war, with Basque and Catalan clubs in particular serving as repositories for separatist sentiments. As such, football began from almost nothing in the Nationalist zone. The Federación Española de Fútbol reconstituted itself in the Nationalist zone in September 1937, led by Lieutenant Colonel Julián Troncoso Sagredo; by the end of the year it had more games, venues, and competitions than the Republicans did. Recognizing this reality, in November 1937 FIFA (International Federation of Football Associations) recognized the Federación Nacional de España, based in the rebel zone, as the legitimate representative of Spain in international competitions. With its approved status in hand, Spain played two games against neighboring Portugal, in November 1937 and September 1938. The Spanish team lost both, the first such defeats for Spain in twelve previous Iberian contests. The Spaniards blamed the losses on the civil war, since dozens of prominent players were dead, imprisoned, or in exile. Despite this recognition, it was too late for Spain to compete in the 1938 World Cup, played in Italy, and the Spanish team did not return to the FIFA-sponsored championship until the first postwar game, played in France in 1950, an absence of sixteen years. The first postwar professional game held in Madrid took place on May 1, 1939, and featured Atlético Aviación and Deportivo Alavés, who played to a 1–1 tie.26 24. Marca, July 2, 19, 1943, September 3, 1944. 25. Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 25, 28; Gonzalez Aja, “Spanish Sports Policy in Republican and Fascist Spain,” 104. 26. Real Federación Española de Fútbol, 1913–1988, 70–71, 195; Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 22–23; Julián García Candau, El Fútbol sin Ley, 141; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 35–36, 37–43; Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 341–42.


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Football was intensely political during World War II, and not just in uniform colors or the opening ceremonies. The game was also political because there was no internal democracy among the clubs, no players’ unions allowed, and no social protections for players, who in the early years were not able to participate in national insurance or retirement programs. Players could not even join the Sindicatos, Falangist-controlled unions that integrated workers by profession or skill. Clubs also had the “right of retention” —at the end of a contract, if a player wanted to leave for another team, the one that held his contract could force him to stay by increasing his salary by 10 percent. Even the best players were not in strong positions to negotiate higher salaries, as by decree salaries in the First Division were set at a maximum of six hundred pesetas, while Second Division players made only slightly more than a skilled worker. Additionally, the Delegación Nacional de Deportes controlled the staff of the local clubs and was able to hire or dismiss at will. The Spanish Olympic Committee also came under the control of the DND, although the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled and Spain was not allowed to participate in the 1948 games. In addition to controlling the international relations of all sports, the DND also had the power to veto any action by any player, coach, team, or league in any sport. The defeated Left, which had lost the Spanish Civil War, considered football a political prop of the regime, denouncing it as illegitimate and recommending, with little success, that opponents of the regime boycott games.27 Regardless of the political context, even the regime agreed that football served as an important “escape valve,” a way to express passionate feelings without running afoul of the state, and was the most popular public amusement of Spaniards. While it perhaps goes too far to claim that the regime used football as a “social drug to keep the people in a state of political passivity,” certainly the state embraced the game as a unifying force in a much divided nation. Support for football was genuine among the population, without question. For example, many fans went without meals to pay the typical admission price of four to five pesetas—close to half of the daily wage for an unskilled worker in Madrid. Bullfights, the second-most popular public spectacle, cost two pesetas for the cheapest seats, in the sun.28 27. Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 19, 23–24, 30–31, 123, 135–37; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 69; Arriba, May 1, 1940; Vicente Verdú, El Fútbol: Mitos, Ritos y Símbolos, 13. 28. Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 13–14; Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 19; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 67; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 98–99.


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Internal football competition was fierce, making up in part for the limited international games. The first postwar national championship began on May 14, 1939, and was eventually won by Atlético Aviación, a team from Madrid, which also won the next year’s competition. Other prominent teams, regular winners of the Liga championship or play-off Cup of the Generalísimo, were Valencia, Seville, Atlético de Bilbao, Real Madrid, and F. C. Barcelona, all of which resumed games in the summer and fall of 1939. Even fans complained, however, that the revived teams lacked the prewar professionalism and excellence of play, primarily because of the youth and inexperience of the players and referees, who were reorganizing. In 1939, for the first time ever, no Spaniards made the list of the best European football players compiled by the Italian Gazetta della Sport. Nonetheless, the Liga was very competitive, with fourteen professional teams in the First Division and sixteen in the Second Division, typically playing more than five hundred games in the regular September–December season. The two playoff rounds took place from December to June, with a ban on games in the heat of July and August. First Division clubs with poor seasons had a threat looming over them, as every year the two teams with the worst records were demoted to the Second Division, and replaced in the First by the best teams of the lesser league.29 These demotions were often traumatic and followed a team’s collapse in regular-season play, such as happened to Celta, of Vigo, which ended the 1943–1944 season with a record of two victories, four ties, and fifteen losses. Gijón, the best in the Second Division, replaced them in the First Division. Even the possibility of descending into the lower group could lead to a club crisis. Also in the 1943–1944 season, Real Club Deportivo Español, a Barcelona team, faced this situation. Just weeks before the end of the playoffs, the team had the second-worst record in the First Division, leading Francisco Román, the club’s president, to resign. He had been booed and harassed by club fans, and had enough of the stress and tension. There was hope for the team, however, and at the personal request of General Moscardó, the players, and the governing board of the team, Román remained in office. The general even took the unusual step of meeting with sports reporters in Barcelona to express his confidence that the team could salvage its season and avert disaster. With this support, Deportivo revived its

29. Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 67, 72–74, 79, 80–81, 83, 89; Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 304; Arriba, April 16, May 3, June 27, July 30, November 17, 1939, February 20, April 2, 30, July 2, 1940; Marca, July 11, September 28, 1943, August 1, 1944; Real Federación Española de Fútbol, 1913–1988, 72.


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season, ending with a still dismal record, eleventh out of fourteen teams in the First Division, but avoiding the humiliation of a demotion.30 One of the most important figures in Spanish football was Santiago Bernabéu, the president of Real Madrid, the powerhouse team in the nation’s capital. Bernabéu was the perfect man to lead the flagship team of Spain, as his political credentials matched his professional career as a player, coach, and club president. In addition to being a leader in football, he was politically above reproach, having enlisted and fought in the Nationalist Army during the civil war, ending the conflict as a decorated veteran with the rank of corporal.31 In September 1943, Bernabéu returned as president of the Real Madrid team, and one year later began construction of a new stadium in northern Madrid, adjacent to the existing field and planned as the largest in Spain. The club had been planning this expansion for more than two years, but it took the strong leadership of Bernabéu to begin the project in earnest. The new stadium, with seating for fifty thousand and potential to add twenty thousand more later, was a major expense, estimated at ten million pesetas. Fortunately, Real Madrid was in a strong financial position, bought the land for the field with cash, and was able to shoulder the eight-hundred-thousand-peseta monthly payment with pledges from its members and supporters. There was tremendous demand to watch the team, with high demand for memberships and season tickets. In fall 1944, for example, eighteen thousand wanted to become ticket-holding members of the club association, but there were only seven thousand openings. This gave impetus to Bernabéu’s plan for the new field, in which thirty thousand seats would be reserved for members.32 One of the objectives of Bernabéu was to encourage competition with other teams, including crosstown rival Atlético Aviación, but especially Barcelona, his team’s traditional rival, without tolerating violence by the fans or players. This was not always possible, as there was tremendous hostility between the fans of Barcelona and Real Madrid, to the point that General Moscardó had to intervene to order calm and quiet on several occasions. For example, he fined both clubs twenty-five thousand pesetas in July 1943 for the bad behavior of their fans at two playoff matches. 30. Marca, January 13, 15, 25, February 6, 22, March 7, April 11, 1944. 31. García Candau, El Fútbol sin Ley, 89; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 18–21. 32. Marca, September 16, 1943, March 31, May 3, July 27, October 28, 1944; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 85, 87; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 274; Arriba, February 13, 1940.


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Spectators had demonstrated “intense intimidation and hostility” against the visiting team and referee, and in Barcelona disrespect toward the political, sports, and military figures in the presidential box.33 The presidents of F. C. Barcelona and Real Madrid wrote public letters to their team’s fans before subsequent games, begging them not to injure the good name of the clubs, and Moscardó ordered that the fines should go to pay for admissions for underprivileged children in the Frente de Juventudes, “those who will make up the fan base of tomorrow.” In its final game of the season, Real Madrid crushed Barcelona, 11–1, winning a place in the playoff finals for the Generalísimo’s Cup against Atlético of Bilbao, the team with the best overall championship record, having won thirteen out of the forty national competitions. Real Madrid was in second place, with seven championships. Bilbao did not disappoint, defeating Madrid in the finals and adding the championship to its record as the regularseason team with the most wins. In November and December of that same year, to restore the public trust, F. C. Barcelona and Real Madrid played “peace games,” although not without an intense police presence to ensure tranquility.34 Rather than encouraging nationalism, as the regime had hoped, the revival of football witnessed increasing regionalism, as these conflicts illustrated. While football was problematic at home, it was less so internationally. Spain used international competition to strengthen its solidarity with friendly nations. Football games against the Axis allowed Spain to demonstrate its support for these regimes but also show its competitive spirit and independence. The official Spanish team competed in eight international matches during the Second World War, four against Portugal and one each against Vichy France, Switzerland, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy. Coached by Amadeo García Salazar (1937–1940) and Eduardo Teus López-Navarro (1940–1945), the Spanish selection’s record in these competitions was respectable, given the loss of so many players to battlefields and exile: four wins, one loss, and three ties. Spain’s only defeat came on April 19, 1942, in a humiliating 4–0 loss to Italy, one week after holding the formidable German team to a 1–1 tie in Berlin’s Olympic stadium before one hundred thousand spectators.35

33. Marca, June 12, 1943; Antonio Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 347. 34. Marca, April 6, June 13, 15, 16, 26, 1943; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 81–82, 87. 35. London, “Competing Together,” 240–41; Arriba, August 13, 1940, April 12, 14, 21, 1942; Real Federación Española de Fútbol, 1913–1988, 323–25, 425, 443.


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In addition, a Luftwaffe team traveled to Spain in November 1941 to play exhibitions against Spanish clubs, leading one Falangist paper to remark, in admiration for the Germans: “It is already public knowledge that the nations prepare for war in an atmosphere of work, discipline and sport.” Spain attempted to match the technology of Germany, equipping many of its stadia with lights for night games, although, in another reflection of the nation’s penury, electrical shortages meant that very few of these were played during World War II. A similar fate awaited the electric motorcycles and tricycles developed by Spanish inventors, which remained undeveloped despite initial praise from state officials.36 Marca, a weekly illustrated newspaper devoted entirely to sports, debuted in 1938. Based on its success, it became a daily on November 25, 1942, and remained so for the duration of the Second World War and beyond. Founded by Manuel Fernández Cuesta, brother of Falangist Secretary General Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, the paper had a surprising lack of political content, which perhaps explains its popularity; Marca routinely sold more than four hundred thousand daily copies. Only on important political dates, commemorating the uprising of July 18, 1936, the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera of November 20, 1936, or the civil war victory of April 1, 1939, did Marca feature even brief political articles. Perhaps because of this, out of more than one hundred newspapers published in Spain during World War II, only the monarchist ABC, the Catholic YA, and the Falangist Arriba sold more daily copies than Marca. The circulation figures highlight the curiosity of most readers in economic news, rationing information, and sports, with international news behind these other areas. Except among the few hundred thousand members of the Falange, there was little interest in national or political news, such as the long verbatim speeches by Franco, Serrano Suñer, and other political figures printed in many issues. With the press directed by the Falange, through censorship and the directives of the April 1938 Press Law, Spanish newspapers during World War II were not known for their investigative methods or exciting stories, instead being in most areas little more than mouthpieces for the state.37 Bullfighting, the second most popular athletic activity, revived under the Franco regime. Long criticized as “African” or an example of Spanish 36. Arriba, November 20, 1941; Marca, June 26, 27, 1943, May 28, 1944, March 12, 1945; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 74. 37. Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 69; Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 54, 79; London, “Competing Together,” 234; Arriba, March 1, 1942; Henry Schulte, The Spanish Press, 1470–1966: Print, Power and Politics, 8, 13–14, 16, 22; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 66.


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“idleness” by Spanish intellectuals, the blood sport had come under withering fire from the Generation of ’98. Writers from José Ortega y Gasset to Miguel de Unamuno denounced the corrida (bullfight) as backward and a hindrance to Spain’s modernization. Despite the ambivalence of the Left toward bullfighting, both sides in the Spanish Civil War allowed the sport to continue, primarily as fund-raisers for the war effort. The Republicans did not give the same importance to the sport, as evidenced by the fact that Madrid’s bullfighting arena served as a vegetable garden during the conflict.38 With the end of the conflict, the Nationalists celebrated Victory Bullfights in Madrid and other cities, festooning arenas with Spanish flags, the symbols of the Falange, and portraits of Franco. The first bullfight after Franco’s victory took place on April 3, just two days after the end of the civil war. While there were arenas in nearly every city and town, it was in the capital where many of the famous matadors played to the largest crowds and gained the most attention in the national media, especially Marca, which during the season nearly always devoted a full page to the shows. In Madrid alone, there were two schools for bullfighting, one near Ventas and the other in Ciudad Lineal.39 As with other spectacles, bullfighting had to conform to the political system: animal names such as “Comunista” were no longer acceptable and were replaced with more acceptable titles. Matadors were categorized in a national ranking system of five classes, with the top twenty-five classified as the “special” category. The next four tiers also had twenty-five bullfighters apiece, grouped by skill levels, and there was a final open category, 5, for those who had not yet proved themselves. The wartime period saw the debut of Manolete, one of the most famous bullfighters, who in his brief seven-year career —he was killed in the arena in 1947—won hundreds of thousands of fans with his artistic and graceful style. The best matadors were significant celebrities, on par with movie stars, and the press chronicled the careers and lives of such bullfighters as Manolete, Domingo Ortega, and Juanito Belmonte in a similar manner. Each had his own style and following, and became famous by killing bulls in Madrid, Seville, and other arenas, including the sentimental favorite of Pamplona.40 38. Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight, 1– 3; Antonio Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 343. 39. Marca, June 22, 1943; Arriba, April 14, 1939. 40. Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon, 213–14; Marca, July 3, 1943; Aline, Countess of Romanones, The Spy Went Dancing: My Further Adventures as an Undercover Agent, 49–51; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 123–24, 273.


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As before the war, the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, with its famous running of the bulls, received significant attention, with photos of the event a major part of one annual issue of Marca. With nearly half of the approximately one thousand bull rings in the world at the time, Spain during World War II was the nation that devoted the most attention to the sport. Scandals erupted, as in football, such as when one famous cattle ranch and bull producer received a fine of ten thousand pesetas for sending inferior toros to fight in Ventas in 1944 and 1945. Instead of the large and fierce beasts that conformed to typical expectations, it had sent smaller animals with defects of spirit and physiology. The cattle merchant that had procured the bulls for the Ventas area was held even more responsible, as this region was more familiar with the requirements, and received a fine of thirty-five thousand pesetas.41 Other competitive sports and contests followed far behind football and bullfighting in popularity, but many did find audiences, both at the professional and amateur level. Horseracing, boxing, men’s and women’s basketball, gymnastics, swimming, cycling, regatta, track and field, hockey, shooting, ice skating, even chess received coverage and drew thousands of spectators. Although Spain did not send cyclists to compete in the July 1939 Tour de France—the last prewar competition—neither did Germany and Italy. Cycling thereafter increased dramatically in importance, with almost five hundred amateur and professional races per year by 1943. In 1944 alone there were more than 750 cycling competitions in Spain, which awarded more than six hundred thousand pesetas in prizes. The military utility of the bicycle was also another important reason for its support by the state.42 Boxing, skiing, and tennis had particularly international implications, with German trainers coming to Spain to assist in the preparation of downhill and cross-country teams and boxers from Vichy France, Hungary, and Slovakia staging exhibitions against Spanish amateurs in Madrid, Bilbao, and Barcelona. As late as 1944, Spanish tennis players competed against Romanians, just months before the Soviet Union occupied the Eastern European state, but planned competitions against Swiss athletes in previous months had to be canceled due to “international difficulties.” In the

41. Marca, July 9, 1943, March 31, 1944; Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 346, 352; Arriba, September 11, 1945. 42. Marca, April 1, 4, 6, 13, June 3, 6, 1943, July 3, 4, 6, 10, 14, May 31, July 5, 1944; Arriba, July 9, October 18, December 3, 1939, April 2, 7, 9, 28, 1940, January 20, 1945.


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boxing ring, Spain did well, beating the Hungarians and Slovaks in most of the match-ups, despite the stylistic superiority of their opponents. The competitions were noted as events in which “the Spanish fury imposed itself on the technicalist opponents.” Nine Spaniards ranked in the top seventy boxers in Europe, excluding the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, and competed well internationally. Boxing was also popular within Spain, with attendance of more than twenty-five thousand fans not unusual at matches of national importance in Madrid and other cities. Spain also competed in the 1942 “Championships of the Youth of the New Europe,” a Nazi- and Fascist-sponsored event in Milan, taking third place in cycling and honorable mention in swimming and shooting.43 It was against Portugal that Spain competed the most, however, establishing its superiority over its smaller neighbor. With its larger population and greater resources, Spain usually had little problem dispatching Portuguese teams and players, especially in football, rugby, and other team sports. The Spanish defeat of the Portuguese national golf team in 1944 had a score typical of these encounters: 11–1. In individual sports, such as shooting, horseracing, and boxing, Portuguese athletes occasionally triumphed, but these were the exceptions. For example, Spain won only half of the wartime peninsular shooting championships, the Iberian Cup, with Portugal taking the prize in 1941 and 1944.44 There were sometimes tensions between the two states, especially before and during football matches. Just prior to their May 7, 1945, football game, on the last full day of World War II, the Spanish and Portuguese teams engaged in a bitter dispute over the size of the football. Each side wanted to use balls to their national specifications. The Portuguese sphere was a little smaller and lighter than the Spanish, and the Portuguese complained that using the Spanish one would put them at a disadvantage. Compromising, the Swiss referee decided to use a Spanish ball for half the game, and a Portuguese ball for the other half. Spain emerged victorious in the contest, before an audience of forty-five thousand in La Coruña, with a 4–2 win. Despite conflicts such as this one, the Delegación Nacional de Deportes denied that there were any problems between the two nations, explaining that all differences were resolved in conditions of complete harmony.45 43. Marca, October 20, 1943, January 8, 20, February 18, 24, April 9, May 5, November 10, 25, 27, 30, 1944; Arriba, October 3–4, 1942, January 8, March 19, 1944; YA, January 14, 1943. 44. Marca, May 7, 18, 23, June 23, October 13, 1944, March 12, May 7, 19, 1945; Arriba, March 24, 1940. 45. Marca, May 7, July 13, 1945.


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Sports reporters praised professional athletes, particularly those who had supported the Nationalists during the civil war, as role models for Spanish youth. An example of this was the profile of Simón Isasi, who at the age of thirty-five was a “multifaceted athlete” as a nationally certified football referee, mountain climber, champion cross-country skier, water polo star, professional football player, carsman, handball competitor, and bowler.46 For all of the interest in football and other sports, the regime was unable to follow through on the German and Italian models it so admired, even with the Caudillo’s personal interest. Franco attended football, regatta, and horseraces, was an avid angler, and enjoyed tennis, golf, riding, and hunting. On his wartime hunts, Franco took with him his wife, family members, and important political figures, such as the German ambassador (1941 and 1942), favored cabinet officers, and the chiefs of his civil and military households. He was generally supportive of athletics, lending his presence to opening ceremonies and important games. Along with two hundred thousand other spectators, for example, he watched Spanish regatta crews compete off the coast of San Sebastian in late summer 1944.47 However, unlike the Nazi and Fascist governments, the Francoist state was unwilling or unable to spend the amounts of money necessary for a serious sporting program. The Delegacion Nacional de Deportes had to be self-sufficient in funds, which meant relying primarily on football revenues. Local Frente de Juventudes sections did not have enough money to provide significant financial resources for local or regional junior football leagues and competitions, again unlike their German and Italian counterparts. For all of the Falange’s desire to use sports “for an exhibition of the virility and energy of the Spaniards,” the penury of the state and party did not permit them to equal their Axis friends in this regard. These failures continued after the end of the war, with Spain’s isolation increasing despite the brave face put on by the regime, which confidently proclaimed in June 1945 that Spain was “called to play a great role in international football,” and that its competitiveness against other nations, on hold since the beginning of the civil war in 1936, would quickly revive.48

46. Ibid., July 2, 1943. 47. Ibid., June 22, September 14, October 13, 1943, September 12, 1944; Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, Box 28, p. 946; Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia, 123; Juan Pablo Fusi, Franco: A Biography, 41, 42–43; Arriba, March 26, 1940. 48. Shaw, Fútbol y Franquismo, 24, 80, 102; Marca, June 3, 1945.


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In drama, along with sports, the New State tried to introduce significant changes. The Franco regime also hoped to return theatrical performances to their classical past, abandoning the experimentation of the Republic period. As early as 1938 the state created the Teatro Nacional de la Falange, which produced religious dramas, classical plays, and light comedies during the civil war. Within weeks after the end of the war, several important theaters in Madrid reopened, including the Teatro Español, Teatro de la Comedia—where the Falange was founded in 1933—and the Teatro Chueca, although most required substantial repairs to their structure, electrical systems, and façades. At these and other theaters throughout Spain, companies had to receive permission from Falangist censors to perform anything. Censorship sometimes went to absurd extremes, as when the use of the phrase “¡Viva el Rey!” (Long Live the King!) was forbidden in classical dramas, for fear of encouraging monarchist sentiments. Rather than nationalizing theaters, the Spanish government left companies and their installations in private hands, although it did provide substantial financial assistance to help revive the art. All performers, actors, and other stage and screen workers did have to join the Falangist Sindicato Nacional de Espectáculos (National Show Syndicate) and receive professional certification, after passing an investigation of their political pedigree.49 In the early Franco regime, “theater was absolutely divorced from its reality,” with light comedy, escapist dramas, classical plays, and heroic stories, rather than topical or realistic performances, the norm before the civil war. After some early efforts to create a Falangist theatrical style, most artists were happy to return to a more classical format for drama and comedy. Audiences preferred nonpolitical plays, and even state subsidies could not conceal nearly empty theaters, which occasionally accompanied the religious dramas revived from the Middle Ages and intensely ideological Falangist plays. Comic operas were also popular, such as The Barber of Seville, performed in January and February 1940 at the Calderón Theater in Madrid. German opera companies and orchestras toured Spain during the war, including the Berlin Philharmonic, but even they limited their performances to classical plays and musical compositions. A rare exception was the visit of the military band of the German Seventh Army, which performed in Madrid on October 4, 1940. In their concert 49. Francisca Bernal and César Oliva, El Teatro Público en España, 1939–1978, 18–19, 23, 26; Ricardo de la Cierva and Sergio Vilar, Pro y Contra Franco: Franquismo y Antifranquismo, 52; Francisco Linares, “Theatre and Falangism,” 211–12; Arriba, April 4, 1939, May 15, 1940


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for thirty thousand spectators at the Plaza de Toros, they played not just classical music but also German and Nazi military music and some pieces by Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer.50 Instead of a revolutionary new sense of drama, the Falange and state supervised a revival of “theater entertainment” as “light relief from the serious business of life.” By the end of 1940, two theaters in Madrid received official support and sponsorship by the state and Falange: the Teatro María Guerrero and the Teatro Español. The purpose of these venues, according to the state and Falange, was to “revive in the Spanish people the Catholic and Imperial sentiments of the theater,” as well as to inculcate in the Spanish public the great and fundamental ideas of our history and our national government’s raison d’être: religion, empire, nobility and idealism.”51 Theaters such as these produced a mix of different kinds of plays, with heavy reliance on the revival of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century classical plays and religious dramas. For example, in its first full season, 1940– 1941, the Teatro Español staged twelve productions. Four of these were classical, four were by known modern authors from before the civil war, and four were new plays created in the spirit of the new state: Catholic and nationalist. Each play ran for between fifteen and thirty performances. The least popular that season was the contemporary political drama El Hombre que Murió en la Guerra (The Man Who Died in the War), which closed after only eight days, while the most popular were the comedy Falstaff, loosely based on the Shakespearean character, and the classical La Casa de la Troya (The House of the Trojans), each of which ran for thirty performances. The price of admission was three to five pesetas, equivalent to admission to a major sporting event, well within the means of the middle classes and even of some working-class families, if they were willing to go a day without bread. Acting companies had little trouble filling their theaters for comedies, musicals, and even some dramas, as the hardships of the postwar period drove people to seek diversions from the difficulties of daily life.52

50. YA, July 22, 1939; Hilde Cramsie, Teatro y Censura en la España Franquista, 30; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 319; Sultana Wahnón, “The Theatre Aesthetics of the Falange,” 203–8; Arriba, October 4, 6, 1940. 51. Linares, “Theatre and Falangism,” 215–16, 220, 226; Ricardo de la Cierva, Francisco Franco: Un Siglo de España, vol. 2, 219; Arriba, April 29, 1941, January 27–28, 1942, May 29, November 23, 28, 30, December 11, 1943, February 15, April 28, May 28, 30, 1944; YA, July 21, 1939. 52. YA, July 21, 1939; Bernal and Oliva, El Teatro Público en España, 34–37; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 98–99; Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 349–50.


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This pace proved unsustainable, however, and with the increase in the number of theaters and accompanying economic pressures, in subsequent years the flagship Teatro Español reduced its repertoire, to seven plays each in 1941–1942 and 1942–1943, four in 1943–1944, and five in 1944–1945. Most other major theaters produced four different plays each season, and like the Teatro Español survived thanks primarily to the “considerable support” received from the state during this period, as most productions were financial losses. The politics of the theater companies followed that of the regime, with directors very quickly becoming the absolute masters of theaters, hiring and firing actors at will, choosing scripts without outside input—other than censorship—and controlling budgets. The content of the performances was mostly nonpolitical, in the sense that very few plays had an explicit Falangist or Francoist ideological content, instead being drawn from classical Spanish theatre and even from Shakespeare. Following the tastes of the audiences, the largest share of performances were comedies of various orders and zarzuelas, light operettas, which consistently sold more tickets than any other genre.53 While theater was popular, cinema was even more accessible, culturally and financially, to the general population. The regime paid close attention to the film industry, establishing censorship to ensure that movies did not undermine the regime, the Catholic Church, or the conservative values of the New Spain. Three major areas could cause problems for film producers and result in a ban on production or release, depending on the status of the project: offenses to Catholic morality and modesty, rejection of Catholic theology and teaching, and questioning or mocking the Franco regime. Film censorship boards usually consisted of representatives of the Falange, the army, the Ministry of Education, and the Catholic Church, any one of which could veto a project. In order to ensure that studios did not violate any of these values, films had to pass two phases: script approval, and final screening of the completed film. Prior script censorship began in July 1939, while post-production review began at the end of the year. In addition to having this two-stage process, as many as twenty censors viewed each film. Books typically had to pass one or two censors, while plays typically had from five to ten.54

53. Bernal and Oliva, El Teatro Público en España, 43, 45, 86, 111–13; Aline, Countess of Romanones, The Spy Went Dancing, 73. 54. Primer Plano, November 24, 1940; Neuschäfer, Adiós a la España Eternal, 49–51; José Luis Castro de Paz, Un Cinema Herido, 27.


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Not surprisingly, censors did not have to prohibit movies very often during the early Francoist period, because “whoever could make films or finance them did not have the least intention of criticizing the politics of the regime.” Censors were often involved from the very beginning to guide production, and filmmakers self-censored controversial topics. Because of the uncertainties of censorship, film studios and the four major distributors—MGM, Hispania-Tobis, UFA, and CIFESA—were not allowed to advertise the opening days for their features, given that censors could literally pull a movie out of theaters at any time. Censors were also very slow in approving films, to the point that in early 1941 the boards had a buildup of two thousand current and previously released films to examine, not including the fifteen hundred screened and censored since 1939, a backlog which by one estimate could take two years of accelerated work to pass through the censorship process.55 If films survived the two-stage approval process, often taking up months in the process, they were still subject to pressure from important lobbies within the regime. Two examples of this were the Spanish films El Crucero Baleares and Rojo y Negro. The former, about a cruiser in the Spanish Civil War, was released in 1941 but withdrawn from theaters at the insistence of the navy, which believed it showed the service in a poor light. Rojo y Negro, a drama about the romance between a Falangist boy and a Communist girl, also during the civil war, was released in 1942, but taken out of theaters shortly after its opening because some Falangists thought it portrayed communism too sympathetically.56 As the most frequented pastime of Spaniards during World War II, film production was very important to the regime. Near the beginning of the war movie screens were widespread, with more than three thousand across the nation, led by Barcelona, which had sixty-five theaters, Madrid, sixty-three, and Valencia, forty-three. By the end of the war there were more than thirty-five hundred cinemas, giving Spain the secondhighest per capita number of screens in continental Europe, after only Sweden. This popularity was all the more impressive because for the first two years after the end of the civil war Franco banned children under the age of fourteen from attending movies, a large part of the market. This restriction ended in May 1941, but only for films suitable for all ages.57 55. Román Gubern, José Enrique Monteverde, et al., Historia del Cine Español, 190; Primer Plano, October 27, 1940, January 12, 1941; Arriba, March 31, 1940. 56. Castro de Paz, Un Cinema Herido, 33; Gubern, Historia del Cine Español, 190. 57. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 114; Primer Plano, October 19, 1941, July 19, 1942; YA, May 11, 1941; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo,


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Conscious of the public interest in movie stars, Hollywood, and motion pictures in general, in October 1940 the government allowed the publication of a new magazine, Primer Plano, to cover these subjects. Beginning its publication in “a bad year for cinema,” the editors claimed that Spain was just emerging from “twenty-five years of an arid desert” to develop a new film industry. While most of the attention in Primer Plano went to chronicling the lives of U.S., Spanish, and German film stars and reviewing new movies, occasionally the magazine’s editor tried to promote a politically favored film. For example, a poorly written and produced German drama, Terror! G.P.U., received praise and coverage from the magazine, as it purported to be an exposé of the evils committed by Stalin’s secret police.58 This promotion followed the generally pro-German perspective of the magazine, which gave prominent coverage to visits by Nazi celebrities, such as Leni Riefenstahl. Even before the Spanish Civil War, Riefenstahl visited Spain and filmed parts of Tiefland (Lowland) there, basing it on an old Spanish folk tale. She returned in 1943 for additional shooting of the long-delayed film and was hailed in the press as a major celebrity. Primer Plano also praised the most famous Hispano-German film, Carmen, la de Triana, a collaboration begun at the personal suggestion of Adolf Hitler by UFA, the most important German studio. This movie, featuring the actress Imperio Argentina, was produced during the civil war in both German and Spanish versions and was one of the few successful Spanish films to find foreign markets. Argentina and her husband, the director Florián Rey, made several other films in collaboration with German studios, with the enthusiastic support of Hitler, who was captivated by the beauty of the actress. Ironically, several of these films, including Carmen, la de Triana, glorified Spanish gypsies, an ethnicity subjected to genocidal actions in Nazi Europe. As late as April 1945, Primer Plano praised the seventy-three upcoming productions out of Berlin. The only admission that the war had spread to German territory was the oblique statement: “German cinema is in a moment of transition.”59 While this understatement may have been true, German cinema was 274; Arriba, August 5, 1945. The Soviet Union was not included in the summary of European cinema screens. 58. Primer Plano, December 29, 1940, May 9, 1943; José Luis Guarner, 30 Años de Cine, 25. 59. Primer Plano, September 19, 1943, January 23, 1944, January 7, February 11, March 18, April 15, 23, 1945; Marca, May 27, 28, 1943; Arriba, October 10, 1939; Irujo, La Lista Negra, 79–81; Vizcaíno Casas, La España de la Posguerra, 32; Leni Riefenstahl, Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir, 153–56, 263, 290–91. Tiefland premiered in 1954, twenty years after Riefenstahl filmed the first shots.


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gradually disappearing from Spanish theaters as the Second World War developed. In 1940, the United States had the largest share of films screened, with 73 features capturing 34 percent of the 214-film total. The Germans were a close second, with 64 (30 percent), followed by Spanish (13 percent), Italian (9 percent), English and French (5 percent each), Argentine (3 percent) and Mexican, whose three films included the most successful film of the year, Allá en el Rancho Grande, which ran for seventeen consecutive weeks. In the 1940–1941 season, German productions were the most popular, with 79 out of the total of 227 (35 percent). The United States had fallen to second place, with 64 films (28 percent), followed by Spain (10 percent), Italy (8 percent), France (6 percent), the United Kingdom (5 percent), Mexico (2.5 percent), Argentina (2.5 percent), and Hispano-Italian (2.5 percent).60 By 1942, these ratios had changed considerably. Out of the total of 129, 39 films were Spanish (30 percent), and 29 were U.S. (22 percent), followed by British (16 percent), French (13 percent), German (7 percent), Italian (6 percent), Mexican (2 percent), Argentine (1.5 percent), and Hispano-Italian (1 percent). Germany’s decline continued in 1943, when it only managed to produce 10 of the 191 feature films released in Spain, accounting for 5 percent of the market. At the same time, the United States increased its offerings to encompass 32 percent of the market, followed by Spain (24 percent), Italy (17 percent), the United Kingdom (12 percent), France (5 percent), Argentina (4 percent), Mexico (2 percent), and Portugal (0.5 percent).61 Even efforts by the German embassy in Madrid to encourage the Spanish government to stand up to American cinematographic assault did not yield significant results. By 1944 the collapse of the German film industry was patent, as its share declined to 1 percent of the market, while that of the United States rose to 51 percent, followed by Spain (18 percent), Sweden (17 percent), Mexico (5 percent), the United Kingdom (4 percent), and France (3 percent). Still, German studios spent money on advertising for the few films they did manage to export to Spain, such as the fantasycomedy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which premiered in spring 1944.62

60. Primer Plano, December 29, 1940; YA, December 21, 1941; Arriba, July 20, 1941. 61. Primer Plano, January 3, December 26, 1943. 62. Primer Plano, October 29, 1944; AMAE, LegR1724, Expediente 74, Letters, December 9–12, between German Ambassador and Spanish Foreign Ministry; Arriba, April 30, 1944.


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The United States had the majority of films banned during the war, for political or moral reasons. Of the 44 foreign films censored during the first eight months of 1944, 28 (64 percent) were U.S., 7 were French (16 percent), 4 were German (9 percent), 2 were British, and 2 Italian (4 percent each), and one Mexican film was banned. Among the U.S. films banned were Yankee Doodle Dandy, 52nd Street, Bosambo (Sanders of the River), The Wolf Man, The Great Ziegfield, A Star Is Born, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Even so, Spanish censorship of U.S. and other Western films decreased after 1942, as more films with pro-Allied political content entered the Spanish market. Protests by U.S. film studios that Spain unfairly taxed American movies did not impede the blanketing of the Spanish market with dozens of features every year or the increasing dominance of Hollywood.63 The Spanish film industry operated under conditions of some ambivalence. For example, in the first issue of Primer Plano, the editors included interviews with some of Spain’s leading academicians. These intellectuals, including Francisco Rodríguez Marín, director of the Academia Española, and the writer Azorín, were asked about their thoughts on the cinema. Without exception, they were negative. Rodríguez Marín believed the cinema had “produced great damage” on society. If movie posters show people kissing, he wondered what he would see in an actual film. This scholar’s opinion was based on the one and only movie he saw. Historian Elías Tormo had never been to a movie in his life, although he almost went to one in 1896.64 Spanish filmmakers were also of two minds in regards to foreign films. While praising the technical skills of the American movie industry and recognizing the general superiority of U.S. products, directors and producers asserted that European films could be just as high in quality, if they did not have to labor under the economic and military difficulties of the war. The official goal of producing one domestic film for every ten imported remained elusive, as more than six hundred foreign movies made their way into Spanish theaters each year. Because of this foreign dominance, more than half of all box office revenues went to U.S., German, or other film studios. Hollywood’s production dwarfed its European counterparts as well, with almost five hundred films released in the 1944–1945 season. Newspapers featured extensive coverage of foreign film stars,

63. Primer Plano, April 23, May 21, 28, July 2, 30, October 8, 29, 1944; Josefina Martínez, “La Guerra en el Cine y la Propaganda: NO-DO, 1943–1945,” 147–48; Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 274. 64. Primer Plano, October 20, 1940.


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especially American ones, for interested audiences, with even Marca, the sports daily, devoting a full page to actors and actresses. Among the praise for many foreign films, especially German and U.S. films, there was also concern about spiritual pollution, such as that allegedly posed by the increasing popularity of “Negroid Music” in U.S. soundtracks, spreading a “rhythm which belongs to the barbarism of the jungle.” Still, Primer Plano went out of its way to claim the influence of Spain on Hollywood; one article asserted that stars and directors were coming to the capital in increasing numbers to visit and film, evidence that “the world is becoming more like Madrid.”65 The linkage between international politics and film was quite explicit, as when Primer Plano asserted that one of the reasons France collapsed so quickly in 1940 was because for many years it had produced movies filled with murder, sex, anti-military sentiments, adultery, and immorality. As many difficulties as Spanish filmmakers had during the Second World War, their neighbors to the North had it far worse. French cinema continued in crisis during the German occupation and Vichy period, as shortages of materials and electrical restrictions forced many theaters to close. Severe censorship was also a problem. Out of fourteen films submitted to German censors in 1944, only one, a Vichy film about horseracing, was approved. In the weeks after D-Day, ten movies in production suspended their filming to await developments. The Blue Division also received significant coverage in the film media, with features discussing photographic exhibitions, radio broadcasts, documentaries, feature films, and even the movie projector of the volunteer unit, donated by the German press chief, Dr. Dietrich.66 Occasionally, nationalism led the editors of Primer Plano to make wild claims to assert the importance of Spain to international cinema. For example, in the second issue of Primer Plano, a story ran that asked the question: “Was Walt Disney born in Spain?” The article interviewed the priest of the village of Mojácar, Antonio Cuesta López, who claimed that Disney was born there and baptized in Guazarama in 1901 as José Guirao Zamora. He even vowed he had received a postcard from Disney asking for a copy of his birth certificate, but had lost the card in the civil war.

65. Marca, April 1, 2, 1943, November 1, 1944; Primer Plano, June 6, 1943, June 2, 1944; YA, October 22, 1939. 66. Primer Plano, October 20, 1940, January 5, 1941, April 26, May 10, June 28, May 9, 1943; Marca, July 16, 1944; Arriba, March 1, 3, 15, April 11, 1942; London, “Competing Together,” 238–39.


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Disney’s alleged parents, José Guirao and María Zamora, emigrated to the United States in 1903, according to Cuesta López. His parents went to work for a man in Missouri named Disney, and after they died Mr. Disney adopted Walt. The mayor of Mojácar, Ginés Carrillo, supported the priest’s assertion, saying “many relatives of Walt Disney” still lived in the village of forty-five hundred, although most were very old and did not remember much of the family. Conveniently, Republicans had burned the church and its birth and baptismal records during the civil war, so no record could possibly remain.67 Franco took a direct interest in cinema, arranged private screenings for himself at El Pardo of the most recent releases, and even wrote a screenplay for a major motion picture, Raza (Lineage), a semiautobiographical and heroic tale of an army family from the Spanish-American War to the Spanish Civil War.68 Although he used the pseudonym “Jaime de Andrade,” the identity of the writer was an open secret in the film industry, and even to some in the general public. Through intermediaries, the dictator made it known that he wanted Raza to be of the highest quality, and tapped José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, a first cousin of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, as director. This film, which premiered in January 1942 in Madrid, became an instant hit, despite some complaints that it was mediocre and did not live up to the propaganda campaign which marketed it. Its opening in Berlin was a significant event, attended by Nazi Party officials, army officers, Spanish workers, wounded soldiers of the Blue Division, and even Sáenz de Heredia. Although pleased with the product, Franco limited his praise to the words, spoken to the director: “You fulfilled your duty.” In private, Franco reportedly wept with emotion over the movie, which starred Alfredo Mayo, one of Spain’s most popular actors, in the role inspired by Franco’s own life, and watched the movie many times over the years. Although he had only directed four films prior to Raza, Sáenz de Heredia would go on to direct a total of thirty-seven more during a forty-year career, making him one of the most prolific cinematographers of the Franco regime.69 Raza and other feature films received significant state support, in the form of guaranteed access to theaters and even direct financial assistance through the Crédito Cinematográfico Sindical, established in 1942. While 67. Primer Plano, October 27, 1940. A later issue accepted that Disney had been born in Chicago in 1901. Primer Plano, October 12, 1941. 68. Fusi, Franco, 41. 69. Fernando Vizcaíno Casas, De la Checa a la Meca: Una Vida de Cine, 52–54, 59, 75; Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia, 164; Preston, Franco, 418, 488; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 373; Arriba, March 17, 1942.


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some films, including Raza, attempted to appeal to Spanish nationalism and the Falangist spirit, the seven major studios (three in Barcelona and four in Madrid) such as CIFESA, the largest studio, Suevia, Emisora, and Aureliano, found more audience interest in comedies and escapist dramas than in political themes. Indeed, supporters of the idea complained that, despite three years of peace, as late as 1942 Spain had not produced a true Falangist “National Syndicalist cinema,” remaining excessively internationalist and imitative of other nations. Successful films with a political message, such as Sin Novedad en el Alcázar (1940) and A Mí La Legión (1942), were exceptions. This failure was not from a lack of state support, however. A subsidy of 30 percent for feature films was typical, although even this support, coupled with private investment through the sale of millions of shares of stock, did not allow Spain to keep pace with its competitors in the industry. Funding for these programs came from customs duties on imports of foreign films. Motion pictures designated as in the “national interest” could receive additional financial aid and marketing support from the state, with guaranteed screenings and expedited censorship. Few films, however, received this coveted designation.70 The average budgets per film, per country, in pesetas, accounted partially for the failures of Spanish film: U.S. films averaged 7 million pesetas; the United Kingdom, 4.2 million; Germany, 3.7 million; Italy, 2.0 million; France, 1.575 million; Spain, 1.0 million. Overall spending on films, including public and private funds, totaled around 80 million pesetas annually. As a comparison, the publishing industry during the same period published thirty-five hundred books at a total cost of 49 million pesetas. The state also tried to reserve 25 percent of screens for domestically produced films, but this was not always possible during times of lower output by Spain’s studios.71 Total production during World War II was very limited, with thirty to thirty-five films per year being average. In 1942, Spanish studios filmed fiftytwo features, and in 1943 forty-nine, but in no other year did this number rise above thirty-three. Spanish cinema experts believed that the nation had to produce at least fifty feature films, plus another two hundred newsreels, cartoons, and short films, to secure a respectable market share —at 70. Castro de Paz, Un Cinema Herido, 30, 55; Primer Plano, July 19, August 2, 1942; Gubern, Historia del Cine Español, 205, 230; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 29, 32; Marca, June 25, 1944, January 12, 1945; YA, October 22, 1939; Arriba, May 11, 1940. 71. Primer Plano, March 5, April 20, 1941, February 1, 1942, May 28, 1944; Gubern, Historia del Cine Español, 207.


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least third in number of films released to the domestic market. Even this achievement, had it been sustained, would have left Spain behind less developed nations such as Mexico and Argentina, both of whom produced more than fifty films per year. In addition to the disastrous economy, which reduced the viability of Spanish cinema, there was also another bottleneck for the industry: access to virgin film. Spain was entirely dependent on imports of this commodity from Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and given tight export controls by all three states as well as a concerted effort by the Spanish government to practice import substitution, there was a constant shortage of the material. Efforts to create a domestic producer did not flourish, thereby keeping Spain dependent on imports of cinematic film as well as materials for still photography.72 Overall, Spain’s features ranked fifth in European film production, after Italy, Hungary, Germany, and Sweden, but Spanish studios did not have the means to gain much access to export markets, so the nation’s international profile was even smaller. Even with these advantages, Spanish cinema continued to experience serious economic difficulties. With the expense to produce a domestic film at around one million pesetas, and the price to import and dub a U.S. movie only half that figure, theater owners were hard-pressed to justify screening Spanish products. After three years of expanding production, studios produced fewer films in 1943 than in 1942, and even fewer in the last two years of the war, as deficits began to take their toll on studios and distributors. This led the regime to conclude in 1945 that the Spanish film industry was passing through a “serious moment economically,” and that without a major increase in support the “Spanish cinematographic industry will disappear.”73 The government was also concerned about foreign influence in the media, including the adoption of English-language vocabulary into common parlance. In addition to writing editorials denouncing the adoption of foreign words into Spanish, on April 23, 1941, the regime banned the exhibition of films unless they were in Spanish, or dubbed into the language. Additionally, dubbing had to be done with Spanish peninsular voices, in pure Castellano without any regional dialects, to prevent additional corruption of the language. There was significant debate on the practice,

72. YA, December 21, 1941; Primer Plano, January 3, May 16, 1943, January 9, November 26, 1944, January 28, 1945; Gubern, Historia del Cine Español, 202, 204; Castro de Paz, Un Cinema Herido, 68; López Mondéjar, 150 Years of Photography in Spain, 183–94. 73. Primer Plano, August 22, 1943. These rankings exclude the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, Box 1, p. 121.


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with most professional cinematographers, writers, directors, and performers disagreeing with mandatory dubbing, believing that audiences should be able to hear the real voices of actors. Some argued that dubbing actually hurt domestic Spanish films, since audiences did not have to struggle with difficult-to-read subtitles on imported movies, and so could watch higher-budget foreign productions without feeling a barrier. The discussion ran through several issues of Primer Plano, with suggestions that some theaters be allowed to show original versions, but this was too far a step in intensely nationalist Spain.74 To ensure that movie audiences saw the world through the regime’s eyes, in September 1942 the state created Noticiarios y Documentales Cinematográficos (NO-DO) to produce newsreels and documentaries. Until this point, Spanish audiences had seen German, Italian, and sometimes U.S. newsreels, but the Spanish government at the end of 1942 decided it needed to produce its own. One of the most important reasons for this was Allied complaints about the prevalence of Nazi information sources, including in the cinema. Rather than balance these screenings with Allied newsreels, the government decided to replace all foreign short films with Spanish ones. The first NO-DO newsreel debuted on January 4, 1943, and subsequently preceded every film screened in Spanish movie houses.75 These twenty-minute newsreels presented images of the Blue Division, the battles on the Eastern Front, Spanish economic missions to other nations, and other contemporary events in the world. More than 40 percent of the reports, however, were about World War II in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. The perspective of these reels began to change dramatically after the summer of 1943, reversing their previously pro-German reporting. Instead of “the crusade against communism,” stories of the Eastern Front became “war reports.” Still, even as late as April 1945, NO-DO saluted the German “heroism in resisting the Soviet offensive.”76 Relatively few of the NO-DO newsreels contained explicit political indoctrination. Viewers expecting coverage of the most burning problems of Spain — hunger, unemployment, the legacy of the civil war, or even domestic politics—would be disappointed. Instead, beyond the international political situation, most of the newsreels had a specifically apolitical

74. Primer Plano, December 19, 26, 1943, January 23, 1944, February 4, 1945; Castro de Paz, Un Cinema Herido, 29; Gubern, Historia del Cine Español, 192; YA, November 11, 1943. 75. Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 305; Saturnino Rodríguez Martínez, El NO-DO, Catecismo Social de una Época. 76. Martínez, “La Guerra en el Cine y la Propaganda,” 146–51.


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content: football, bullfighting, and popular culture, rather than clearly Falangist or even Francoist ideological propaganda. The regime, it seems, was more interested in amusing and entertaining the population than in educating it in the values of the New State.77 Radios became more common in Spain during World War II, and millions listened to serials and music broadcasts, although Spain still had one of the lowest numbers of home radios per capita, with only 1.5 percent of Spaniards owning personal receivers. Even Portugal, Finland, and Slovakia had a higher percentage of radios. In absolute numbers, approximately one million radios were in Spain by 1943, creating a large and rapidly growing audience. More than 60 percent of these were in public places, however, rather than in private homes. Songs from the most popular musicals, previously heard only in theaters, entered the homes and businesses of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, along with jingles for consumer goods and products. Given the presence of receivers in many bars, cafés, and other public venues, the listening audiences were much larger during popular broadcasts. Officially, the state discouraged listening to broadcasts from other nations, especially from the Allies, and banned the secondary publication of information transmitted over foreign shortwave, but significant numbers of Spaniards listened to the BBC or Radio Berlin nonetheless, both of whom had Spanish-language shows on the air.78 A high percentage of these radios were German, a result of Nazi efforts to promote the distribution of the machines, and ads for Telefunken, the world’s largest producer of radios, continued even after exports to Spain were no longer possible in 1944 and even 1945. The regime also expanded its shortwave programming, including football information broadcast to the soldiers of the Blue Division in Russia, who otherwise had to wait up to three weeks for results from the Liga. The organizer of this new service, as well as the expansion of Spanish broadcasts to the domestic market and the Americas, was Colonel Emilio Tarduchy, a veteran Falangist who became director of the Red Nacional de Radiodifusion (National Radio Broadcasting Network) in 1942. Private radio stations continued to operate, however, but remained under the same censorship and restrictions as other media.79

77. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 85–86. 78. Vizcaíno, Historia de la Villa de Madrid, 346; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 107–8; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 35–36, 83; Arriba, October 28, 1939. 79. Fernández Santander, El Fútbol durante la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo, 80; Arriba, March 10, 1942, March 11, April 30, June 25, September 24, 1944, March 11, 1945.


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Because of its social conservatism, the Franco regime tried to limit some forms of entertainment, especially those that could provide opportunities for men and women to spend excessive time together. The state restricted the times entertainment venues could operate, issuing an order in November 1940 by which bars, cafés, and restaurants had to close no later than 1 a.m., with cinemas and theaters prohibited from beginning any performances after midnight. The Interior Ministry also decreed in 1940 that municipalities should not issue permits for new cabarets, dance halls, beer gardens, or other places for adult recreation, and even those establishments that had been destroyed during the civil war had to request special permits to rebuild and reopen. The only exceptions were for new hotels or charitable establishments, which could include dining facilities or restaurants in their construction.80 In addition to restrictions on their hours of operation, venues were also very restricted as to the manner in which they could serve food. Not only were they subject to rationing’s limits on quantities but also they could not serve more than one egg per person, could not serve butter after breakfast, and could not sell food à la carte, instead having to sell by the menu. Even tapas, bar food available à la carte, were limited to sardines, anchovies, tuna, almonds, hazelnuts, and shellfish. Restaurant prices were well above those which most Spaniards could afford: twenty pesetas for the typical two-plate lunch menu, and forty pesetas for the same in a luxury restaurant. Meals at the most opulent restaurants could exceed these prices, sometimes charging more than one hundred pesetas for a meal. Near the high end of Madrid’s cultural life, the rich and powerful congregated at swank restaurants, such as Lhardy’s, or for larger gatherings at the Hotel Ritz, one of the few luxury hotels left standing in the capital capable of hosting gala dinners and receptions. To the sounds of the Ritz’s orchestra playing the waltz or a zarzuela, the fortunate few could enjoy elegant meals in a town beset by rationing and shortages. Given the new wealth spread by estraperlo, the renovated Palace Hotel, which advertised that it was “more sumptuous than ever,” also did not lack for customers after it reopened in October 1939.81 Those dining at the finest restaurants were sometimes confronted with the significant poverty afflicting their fellow Spaniards, as panhandling 80. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 68; Julio de Antón, Historia de la Policía Española, 361; YA, May 10, 1940; Arriba, May 21, 1940. 81. Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 137; Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia, 134, 138, 153; Valdes Larrañaga, De la Falange al Movimiento, 124–25; Arriba, September 20, 1939.


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was widespread during the Second World War. This practice of public begging became illegal in Madrid at the order of Miguel Primo de Rivera, civil governor of Madrid, who described it as a “public health danger.” Primo de Rivera may have been personally confronted with the unpleasantness of poverty, perhaps while dining at one of Madrid’s fashionable restaurants, favorite haunts for those dependent on handouts. Complicity in this act also became an infraction. Owners of businesses could be fined up to five hundred pesetas for allowing beggars to remain in front of their shops. Even Metro subway workers became responsible for keeping the subway clear of beggars, as well as of those not sufficiently clean to ride the trains. Homelessness and panhandling were serious and widespread problems and were not limited to the unemployed; the regime was particularly embarrassed by the spectacle of conscripted soldiers, who were paid a pittance, fed poorly, and forced to endure terrible living conditions, begging in the streets wearing their army uniforms.82 Daily life for most Spaniards remained difficult during the Second World War, with the limited entertainment possibilities offering small relief from the ongoing challenges of finding food, employment, and personal security in a time of hunger, joblessness, and repression. While movies, theater, books, and athletic competitions provided a necessary escape from the unpleasantness of life for many, it would be many years—in some cases not until the 1960s—before nearly all Spanish families had sufficient nutrition, housing, job opportunities, and even leisure possibilities. Still, even the restricted forms of culture and leisure available to the average Spaniard were at least a distraction from the daily suffering many endured. Leisure activities also offered a chance for Spaniards to demonstrate indirectly their political interests. Far from reinforcing the nationalist, conservative ethos of the regime, the most popular forms of entertainment were the least politicized and least connected to the explicit messages of the regime. When given a choice between openly fascist or authoritarian cultural and leisure activities and those which demonstrated a lack of explicit politics, most Spaniards chose the nonpolitical forms of entertainment. While not an expression of open opposition to Franco’s government, these choices were at least a manifestation of widespread disinterest in politics by the general population—hardly an endorsement of the authoritarian state and its leadership. 82. López Mondéjar, 150 Years of Photography in Spain, 197; YA, March 29, 1941; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 56.


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Chapter 6 Women and the Sección Femenina

A

fter the end of the Spanish Civil War, women were a majority of the surviving population, fourteen million out of a 1940 population of just under twenty-six million. Within the constraints the Franco regime placed on women, and despite a traditional Catholic view of gender, there was still a surprising amount of autonomy for them. The Sección Femenina—SF (Women’s Section) of the Falange provided an arena for young girls and unmarried women to learn, teach, and even participate in the political life of the nation. The leader of the Women’s Section, Pilar Primo de Rivera, was also a major participant in some of the early debates within the regime on issues as important as Spanish entry into the war and the shape of the New State. More broadly, the Women’s Section provided a venue for women to promote unexpectedly progressive views on education, athletics, and professional development.1 While promoting conservative and Catholic views of the role of women in society, the Women’s Section also allowed women to participate in political activities, sports, vocational training, and other areas counter to the expectations of the church and other more traditional elements of society. Faced with the ambivalence of its own position—strengthening the autonomy and skills of women while embracing theology and ideology that minimized their pres1. Maria Campo Alange, La Mujer en España: Cien Años de su Historia, 273; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 94.

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ence and authority —the Women’s Section was emblematic of a regime that did not present a clear vision of its own future. In general, the Franco regime promoted a conventional and reactionary view of family life and marriage, taking its basis from conservative and nationalistic Catholic teachings. Women were supposed to be mothers, wives, and devoted followers of Christ. They were to be educated only as necessary to fulfill these roles: “Under Franco, women’s primary social function was motherhood. Hence, women’s aspirations related to work, education and self-betterment, social activity and emancipation were perceived as a threat to their biological destiny as breeders of the nation’s future generations. Women could be politicized only through the notion of fulfilling a common female destiny based on their reproductive function.”2 This lack of politicization was apparent in every government assembled by Franco. No women held cabinet or other high ministerial positions. As with the Catholic Church, which offered leadership to women in the segregated religious orders, only in the separate sphere of the Sección Femenina (SF) and in the charitable organizations of the Falange could women hold executive positions. Even in this environment, however, women of the Right were able to act with some measure of independence to promote opportunities beyond those within the family.3 Despite the typical image of the Women’s Section as a promoter of women’s submissiveness, its educational efforts occasionally supported contrary ideas. For example, a book for young girls, Women of Spain, featured as role models not dutiful housewives or mothers, but strong women such as Queen Isabella, regent of the Roman Empire Gala Placida; St. Teresa of Ávila; and dozens of other monarchs, religious leaders, writers, and even a few women soldiers from the ancient world to the nineteenth century. The author of this book, Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, was the widow of one of the founders of the Falange and the second most important female leader in the immediate postwar era, behind only Pilar Primo de Rivera.4 Beyond the lessons of Women of Spain, the SF promoted several key elements in the education of young girls. Pilar Primo de Rivera authorized the 1942 “Education Plan,” which included five main teaching areas outside of the classroom: religion (dogma, morals, and liturgy), Nationalsindicalismo (theory, morality, and style), domesticity (family pedagogy, domestic

2. Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War, 183. 3. Aurora Morcillo Gómez, True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco’s Spain, 3. 4. Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, Mujeres de España, 7–10, 43–47, 65–68, 103–5; Arriba, November 3, 1939.


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economy, and childcare), music (choir), and physical education (gymnastics and sports). Left to the schools were mathematics, science, language arts, history, and every other academic subject. Even in the schools, girls were often discouraged from scholarly pursuits, warned away from reading excessively in subjects other than religion. The basics of girls’ education came through the organizations of the SF, “Houses of Arrows” for girls under the age of seventeen, and “Leaders’ School” for those seventeen and older.5 While there were other organizations for women during the early Franco regime, such as the feminine branch of Acción Católica (AC), it was within the Falange that the largest numbers participated. Falangist women, while enthusiastically Catholic, also made serious efforts to undermine Acción Católica by limiting its areas of activity to strictly religious matters. Although there were some women who joined both organizations, there was still a great deal of competition between the SF and AC, with both attempting to become the preferred organization for women and key provider of social services. By the beginning of World War II, the SF had won the struggle.6 The Women’s Section was almost as old as the original Falange. The Falange Española began as an independent fascist party in 1933, founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who appointed his sister, Pilar Primo de Rivera, to direct the Sección Femenina of the movement. For more than a year, Primo de Rivera resisted his sister’s proposal for an independent element for women, and once it was created in 1934, he insisted that its work should be auxiliary to that of men. In his only statement about women, he advocated a very traditional view: “Neither are we feminists. We don’t understand the manner of respecting women which consists in taking away her magnificent destiny and giving her manly functions . . . the women always accept a life of submission, service, of selfless sacrifice for a cause.”7 During the Second Republic, the SF confined its activities to “auxiliary work, such as consoling the families of dead comrades, visiting prisoners or sewing clothes.” Soon after the Spanish Civil War began in 1936 with 5. Delegación Nacional de la Sección Femenina, Plan de Formación, 7–8; Richards, A Time of Silence, 62. 6. Ecclesia, February 15, 1941, January 2, June 19, July 17, 1943, May 6, 1944; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 144; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 99–100; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 309. 7. María Teresa Gallego Méndez, Mujer, Falange y Franquismo, 28–39, 33–34; Victoria Enders and Pamela Radcliff., eds., Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain, 376.


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the Nationalist uprising of Francisco Franco and other generals, the Spanish Republic executed José Antonio Primo de Rivera. His sister, however, operating in Nationalist territory, continued to lead Falangist women. At the time of the first National Council of the SF, convened in January 1937, the organization boasted sixty thousand members, a massive increase since the Republican years, when at best there were a few hundred affiliates. At this event, the first which demonstrated the mass appeal of the Women’s Section to conservative girls and women, Pilar Primo de Rivera emphasized her belief in the subordination of the female to the male: “The true duty of women for the Motherland consists of creating families with a strong center of austerity and happiness where everything traditional is promoted. What we don’t need to do is put ourselves in competition with them—the men—because we will never equal them and, on the contrary, we will lose all of the grace and all of the elegance which are indispensable for coexistence.”8 In April 1937, General Franco, who had become the unquestioned leader of the rebels, ordered all political parties in his zone to unite in one movement. This new Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, the result of a forcible merger of the Falange, the Carlist Tradicionalistas, and other right-wing parties, was received poorly by many falangistas. During this critical month of April 1937, Pilar Primo de Rivera was not in the provisional rebel capital of Salamanca where Franco ordered the union, having undertaken an organizational mission in northern Spain. She and her followers opposed the unification because they did not want the Falangist ideology and spirit of José Antonio to be diluted.9 While some Falangists agreed with her views, hoping for a check on Franco’s power, attempts to prevent the unification were short-lived, as Franco argued persuasively for unity of command in the war effort. Franco ordered the arrest of prominent opponents of the Unification, but did not include Pilar Primo de Rivera in his orders, perhaps fearing a backlash from arresting the sister of the Falangist founder. Seeing the results of opposing Franco and fearing the impact on the war effort of such dissension, Primo de Rivera and her followers abandoned their resistance. 8. Rosario Sánchez López, Mujer Española, Una Sombra de Destino en lo Universal, 19, 21; Gallego Méndez, Mujer, Falange y Franquismo, 47–48. 9. Luis Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 61; Boletín del Movimiento Falange Española Tradicionalista (BMFET), May 5, 1937; Maximiano García Venero, Testimonio de Manuel Hedilla, 414–19, 513–14; Pilar Primo de Rivera, Recuerdos de una Vida, 109–10; Ramón Serrano Suñer, Entre el Silencio y la Propaganda: La Historia como fue Memorias, 191.


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Whether out of fear or genuine concern for the Nationalist cause, open Falangist struggles against Franco and the forced unification subsided as quickly as they had arisen. Still, this acceptance did not entail blanket endorsement of Franco’s policies. When the Caudillo adopted the Royal March (Marcha Real) and monarchist flag as the uprising’s symbols, Primo de Rivera protested, fearing that this identification could weaken the Falange. She favored the Falangist flag and anthem, “Cara al Sol,” as more in the revolutionary spirit of her brother.10 Even though Franco may have had misgivings about a woman being in charge of a political organization and might have suspected Primo de Rivera’s loyalty, he did not remove her from SF leadership. Her modest and timid demeanor perhaps put Franco at ease, although she did on occasion show a temper, especially when Franco demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for Falangism. Another factor was the legitimacy she brought to the regime, as the most important surviving member of the Primo de Rivera family. Her brother Miguel, despite holding many important positions within the Falange and regime, was something of a playboy, and so informal family leadership devolved to her. Additionally, she was practically the only woman in leadership within the regime, one of three women appointed in July 1937 to the first post-Unification Consejo Nacional (National Council) of the Falange, along with Mercedes Sanz Bachiller and María Rosa Urraca Pastor, leader of the Carlist nurses in the civil war. Primo de Rivera remained on the Consejo Nacional during the entire Second World War, one of only eleven members to serve in all five incarnations, out of almost two hundred who served on the council.11 Pilar Primo de Rivera was also one of nineteen members of the smaller Junta Política, ostensibly the governing body within the Falange, as well as a member of the Consejo de la Hispanidad, an organization promoting Spanish values and ties to former colonies. Because of her family heritage and public activity, she was also revered as “a living symbol” of the Falange. In addition to promoting Primo de Rivera as a role model and example, the regime also upheld the images of the Virgin Mary, St. Teresa of Avila, and Queen Isabella of Castille as “examples of rectitude, mystical 10. Ramón Garriga, El General Juan Yagüe, 129; García Venero, Testimonio, 508–11, 517, 520–21; Serrano Suñer, Entre el Silencio y la Propaganda: La Historia como fue Memorias, 165; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 64; Jesús Pardo, Las Damas del Franquismo, 77–78. 11. BMFET, July 1937, Decree No. 23 to jefes provinciales, June 24, 1937; Pardo, Las Damas del Franquismo, 73, 75–77; Chueca, El Fascismo en los Comienzos del Regimen de Franco, 222.


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suffering and forbearance” and as role models for young members of the SF.12 One of the three early members of the Consejo Nacional of the Falange was María Rosa Urraca Pastor, the national chief of the Frentes y Hospitales. Urraca Pastor, who was an important figure in the Carlist movement, did not automatically accept the leadership of Primo de Rivera, despite her organization being absorbed into the Falange after the Unification of 1937. The conflict between the SF and Frentes y Hospitales was serious, with margaritas (Carlist nurses) unwilling to accept appointments by Primo de Rivera to provincial positions. With the end of the civil war, however, there was no longer a need for a mass mobilization of nurses, and so the government disbanded the organization in May 1939, leaving the SF and Auxilio Social (Social Aid) as the only official organizations for women.13 With her prominence and ardent Falangism, Nazi Germany soon singled out Pilar Primo de Rivera for favor and support. Just a few months after supporting the abortive Falangist rebellion against the Unification of April 1937, Primo de Rivera was decorated by the German Red Cross for her aid to victims of the civil war. In April 1938 the Berlin Falange and the Ibero-American Institute, a research center directed by Germany’s former ambassador to Spain, Wilhelm von Faupel, sponsored a visit to Germany by Pilar Primo de Rivera. Hosted by prominent Nazi leaders and feted throughout the Third Reich, Primo de Rivera had nothing but praise for Hitler and the New Germany. The German press, in return, profiled the work of the Sección Femenina and printed articles written by Pilar Primo de Rivera in the publication Contra-Komintern. Nazi leaders also invited SF delegations to visit the Third Reich to learn about its institutions and operations.14 As early as the civil war, the SF became the official organization for Nationalist girls and women, at least until they married, at which point they could no longer hold membership. By the end of the civil war, the organization was recruiting hundreds of thousands of women into its ranks. 12. Arriba, July 30, September 13, October 11, 26, 1939, February 1, 2, May 10, 1940, January 8, 1941. Richards; A Time of Silence, 54; Kathleen Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism: The Women’s Section of the Falange, 1934–1959, 40–41. 13. Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 137; Arriba, May 26, 1939. 14. Archivo General de la Administracín (AGA), P, SGM 10, Letter of August 31, 1937, from Pérez to Martín Almagro, Secretario Nacional de Prensa y Propaganda; Dionisio Ridruejo, Casi unas Memorias, 186–92; Gallego Méndez, Mujer, Falange y Franquismo, 60; La Gaceta Regional, October 29–30, 1937; Arriba, July 21, 1939.


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With a few exceptions, able-bodied unmarried women in the Nationalist zone had to serve as health-care workers or seamstresses, or to provide other labor to aid in the struggle. Many of these women became part of the SF. By some estimates, the SF had as many as six hundred thousand members at the end of 1938. Of these, thirty-eight died during the war as a consequence of their participation in underground actions, or through injuries suffered from Republican military action.15 Along with Auxilio Social (Social Aid), also part of the Falange, the SF became “by far the most effective women’s auxiliary service organization in either zone,” with more than half a million young women volunteering for service by the end of the civil war. This achievement came despite some major conflicts between SF leader Pilar Primo de Rivera and Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, the leader of Auxilio Social. Sanz Bachiller wanted Auxilio Social to be independent and coequal, while Primo de Rivera believed Sanz Bachiller’s organization should be subordinate to the SF. The dispute over control was magnified by a personality conflict between the two women. Additionally, they disagreed on the gender makeup of Auxilio Social, with Primo de Rivera arguing for a feminine leadership and Sanz Bachiller supporting the integration of men into the organization, at least in administrative and managerial positions. There was not a significant ideological component beyond these issues, as both had personal ties to the Falange — Sanz was the widow of Falange cofounder Onésimo Redondo. The struggle between the two women was not resolved until Auxilio Social became formally subordinate to the Women’s Section in December 1939, around the time Sanz Bachiller remarried. Within six months, she had left leadership roles in Auxilio Social permanently, even losing her post on the Consejo Nacional in 1940. By choosing to marry, she gave up her public life, unlike Primo de Rivera, who remained permanently single.16 Pilar Primo de Rivera, however, remained in office as the leader of the SF until the organization’s dissolution in 1977 during Spain’s transition to democracy. From this position of leadership, she acted to preserve the spirit of her brother’s ideas, advocating Falangist revolution and Catholic conservatism in the party and state. Even foreign observers, such as Count Ciano, Italy’s foreign minister, recognized the SF as one of the most active

15. Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood, 24; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 301; Luis Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 104. 16. Payne, Falange, 203; Payne, The Franco Regime, 165, 187; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 137–39, 200–203; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 68–69, 90– 91; Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism, 69–71.


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elements within the Falange. With the possible exception of Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo, Primo de Rivera was the most influential woman in Spain during World War II, and this importance did not diminish even as the Falange became withered and tamed at the end of the conflict. Primo de Rivera’s mission was to exalt the ideology of the Falange and Catholic Church among the female majority in Spain, particularly among young and impressionable girls: future mothers in the New State. “In a society divided into winners and losers, in a postwar where the only idea was to survive in the middle of hunger, repression . . . and corruption, to the women was given a transcendental mission: to transmit the ideology of National Catholicism to even those of the most tender ages, to arrive where the regime, lacking schools and methods, could not arrive.” The official ideal was to be a virgin and then mother, with almost no approved alternatives. To the SF and to the Catholic Church, both tremendously influential under the Franco regime, “marriage represented the ultimate goal for the Christian woman.”17 With the end of the civil war and the coming of the world war in 1939, Spain’s focus became that of rebuilding. Because of its size and the importance of its leader, the Women’s Section played an important role in this process. With 850,000 members in April 1939, Primo de Rivera’s organization was the largest political body in post–civil war Spain. In addition to its political work in support of the Franco regime and Falangism, the SF was successful in promoting literacy, improving nutrition for mothers and families, decreasing child mortality, expanding access to health care, and training teachers and nurses. With the coming of the peace, however, and decreased demand for its services, interest in the Women’s Section declined. Membership fell to approximately 600,000 by early 1940 and remained there for the remainder of World War II.18 Women of the Sección Femenina exercised more autonomy and freedom of action than any previous women’s organization in Spanish history, organizing athletic competitions, promoting education, enrolling in universities, and participating in other political, social, and religious activities. In these efforts, the SF was far more supportive of opportunities for women 17. Payne, Falange, 197; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 142–44; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 257; Ramón Garriga, La Señora de El Pardo, 146; María del Carmen Agullo Díaz, “Mujeres para Dios, para la Patria y para el Hogar,” 17; Aurora Morcillo Gómez, “Shaping True Catholic Womanhood: Francoist Educational Discourse on Women,” 56. 18. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 301–3; Sánchez López, Mujer Española, una Sombra de Destino en lo Universal, 26; Arriba, January 10, October 1, 6, 1940, January 17, 1941; Primo de Rivera, Recuerdos de una Vida, 149–50.


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than its contemporaries among the conservative Right and Catholic women’s groups, and many members considered themselves “progressive reformers.” The section’s programs and publications promoted motherhood and domesticity as the ideal, but the SF also understood that many women had to work out of economic necessity. Some “articles praised certain professions as well as commending the personal qualities of the individual who has achieved success,” but these messages were less typical, especially during World War II.19 In promoting active physical education, camping, and other outdoor activities, it broke with more traditional organizations such as Acción Católica and the Carlists, which believed women should not exert themselves or make a public display of athletic prowess. Arguing that physical activity was compatible with Christian modesty, the SF promoted training and regional and national sporting competitions in what it considered dignified sports: gymnastics, basketball, swimming, field hockey, tennis, handball, and snow skiing. Even the uniforms worn by the SF met with disapproval, despite their covering of all skin between the knees and the neck. Swimming events were generally not open to the public, as the suits—extremely conservative as they were—were more revealing than the church, which had urged the end of mixed-gender swimming and beach-going, would have preferred. The SF was also more open to women of all social classes than other branches of the Falange, which tended to favor members of the middle and upper classes. The SF also came into conflict with more reactionary members of the clergy, who tried to limit the organization’s efforts to teach about first aid and child care, especially when these courses involved open discussion of anatomy or sex.20 It was only within the SF that women were able to hold positions of authority or prestige in Spanish politics. From their headquarters at the castle of La Mota, in Medina del Campo (Valladolid), the SF supervised the political, social, and religious life of millions of Spanish girls and women. To assist in the efforts of the SF, Primo de Rivera had a surprisingly small staff to supervise the lives of half the Spanish population: one general secretary, a personal assistant, five section directors, and fifty other managers and office workers. Additionally, each province, colony, and overseas 19. Carmen Alcalde, Mujeres en el Franquismo, 56–57; Victoria Enders, “Problematic Portraits,” in Enders and Radcliff., ed., Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain, 389; Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism, 23. 20. Enders, “Problematic Portraits,” 384; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 110, 124–25, 156–57; Marca, April 4, July 3, 4, 1943; Chueca, El Fascismo en los Comienzos del Regimen de Franco, 262; Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism, 62.


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émigré community had an unpaid provincial delegate, who reported to one of the section directors or to Primo de Rivera herself.21 Pilar Primo de Rivera ran an organization divided into sections, including the Hermandad de la Ciudad y el Campo (Sisterhood of the City and the Country), Servicio Exterior (Foreign Service of the SF), feminine section of the Sindicato Español Universitario (Spanish University Syndicate), and feminine arm of the Frente de Juventudes (Youth Front). Assisting Primo de Rivera were a national secretary and offices for culture, health, administration, and press and propaganda.22 Additionally, the Sección Femenina managed the Servicio Social (Social Service), six months of education and three months of labor for women, often in the countryside aiding with literacy, health, or vocational training for the less fortunate. Decreed on November 28, 1937, for all Spanish women ages seventeen to thirty-five unless married or disabled, this program continued through the civil war and World War II. Social service efforts, despite their semi-coerciveness, did provide many benefits: “Although its efforts were seldom spectacular and fell far short of the immense amount of social work needed in Spain . . . the activities of the Sección Femenina proved of much greater benefit to Spain than did those of its masculine counterpart. . . . The Sección Femenina offered the only direct example of an effort to obtain social justice under a government whose propaganda harped incessantly on la patria, el pan y la justicia (the Fatherland, bread, and justice).”23 The implementing regulations of 1939 exempted widows with children and those who had served as nurses or auxiliaries to the Nationalist forces during the civil war. Later modifications in 1944 granted working-class women exemption from the three-month training period, although not the six-month service obligation. The Servicio Social provided room and board, although no salary, to the unmarried women who served, usually away from their homes and families. While the Servicio Social was not strictly compulsory, the regime required a completion certificate before it would grant professional titles, university entrance, passports, affiliation in sporting leagues, membership in any official organization of the state or Falange, government jobs, or even a driver’s license. Tens of thousands of women performed their duty every year, with just more than ninety thousand in 1943 alone. Middle- and

21. Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 106–7, 121. 22. Arriba, January 29, 1941; Pilar Primo de Rivera, Recuerdos de una Vida, 157–59; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 137–38. 23. Payne, Falange, 203–4.


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upper-class women tended to avoid Servicio Social, especially if they had no interest in finding employment or higher education. The vast majority of those completing their service —two-thirds in 1943—worked in Auxilio Social, the vast Falangist charitable organization, with smaller groups working in Falangist offices, SF training schools, and for other benevolent organizations, many affiliated with the Catholic Church. Among the campaigns by these workers were vaccinations and collections of clothing for the less fortunate, funded by the plato único and voluntary donations. Auxilio Social also ran thousands of free dining halls, feeding more than half a million people, mostly women and children, on an average day in 1943.24 The regime’s National Catholic ideology, even when strongly influenced by Nazism and Fascism during World War II, enforced and promoted separate spheres for men and women. Women remained mostly confined to the home and church, with only limited opportunities for vocational or educational endeavors to prepare them for this life. The SF had the mandate to train the entire female population under the age of eighteen: “preparing women to be mothers became a bedrock of Francoist reconstruction.” This education took place apart from boys, as the Nationalist regime had banned coeducation as early as September 1938. Even in public schools, which served more than 75 percent of Spanish girls, there were mandatory courses on religion and Christian heritage as part of the formal curriculum. Soon after the end of the civil war, the authority of the SF increased, as it was given responsibility to promote Falangism as a key component of “the political and social education of Spanish women.”25 At the university level, there were few educational opportunities for women. While women were never officially banned from attendance, educational and political authorities strongly discouraged them from enrolling and in most cases would not allow coursework to lead to a formal degree or certificate, except in areas considered appropriate for women: child care, teaching, and nursing. Young women of the upper classes could also take courses in fine arts and literature. Still, thousands of women studied for the bachillerato, a university preparatory and secondary school 24. Socieded Española de Historia de la Educacion, Mujer y Educacion en España, 1868– 1975, 19–20; Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood, 25, 32–33; Arriba, July 25, 30, 1939, January 9, December 17, 1943, January 6, 12, March 14, 1944; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 165; Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism, 17–18. 25. Morcillo Gómez, “Shaping True Catholic Womanhood,” 51, 55; Socieded Española de Historia de la Educacion, Mujer y Educacion en España, 1868–1975, 22; Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood, 24; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 204–5; Arriba, December 29, 1939.


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examination. At least a third of students who took the exam during the Second World War were women, although only about one-third of this group went on to a university. The percentage of women out of the total number of enrolled university students did increase during World War II, however, from 7.9 percent to 13.4 percent over those who had attended during the Second Republic.26 These opportunities were available to the daughters of middle- and upper-class families, but not all Spanish women received these benefits. Overall, almost 20 percent of Spanish women, as compared to 10 percent of the men, were illiterate even as late as 1950. To address this problem, the SF conducted a massive effort, using the Hermandad de la Ciudad y el Campo section of the SF along with thousands of Servicio Social volunteers, to educate women, especially rural women, in health, literacy, and nutrition. The Hermandad also sponsored vaccinations and brought mobile classrooms and libraries to isolated villages and districts throughout Spain. In major Spanish cities, the Women’s Section even offered foreign language courses, teaching elementary and intermediate German, French, English, and Italian to girls.27 For all of their support for traditional gender relations, leaders of the Sección Femenina often were at odds with the more reactionary clerics and ultra Catholics, sometimes feeling like heretics for their support of additional educational opportunities for women.28 More conservative groups wanted Spanish girls to be even more focused on the home, family, and church, leaving aside even the limited possibilities the SF advocated in athletics, careers, and education. Despite limited opportunities for education, some women did achieve some recognition during World War II, primarily for novels and children’s books. For example, the blind novelist Concha Espina continued her writing, publishing seven novels before her death in 1955. Carmen Laforet earned the Nadal Prize in 1944 for her novel Nada. Carmen de Icaza, national secretary of Auxilio Social, also wrote a number of novels and was one of the most widely read writers in 1943. Other women achieved success in journalism, although editors typically limited their writing to 26. Campo Alange, La Mujer en España, 293, 301; Morcillo Gómez, “Shaping True Catholic Womanhood,” 59–60; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 95. 27. Campo Alange, La Mujer en España, 293; Morcillo Gómez, “Shaping True Catholic Womanhood,” 85–87; Sánchez López, Mujer Española, una Sombra de Destino en lo Universal, 34; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 261–63; Arriba, January 28, 1941. 28. Pilar Primo de Rivera, “Una Entrevista con Pilar Primo de Rivera,” La Actualidad Española, December 25, 1974, interviewed by Pilar Urbano.


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articles on children, the home, family, and entertainment. The first woman to receive a professional certificate as a journalist was María Gabriela Corcuera, who graduated from training along with sixteen male colleagues in November 1941.29 For all of its restrictions on social life and lifestyles, the Franco regime tolerated prostitution for many years. Ironically, the argument used to justify the maintenance of brothels was a moral one: to preserve the purity of honorable Spanish girls, their fiancées had to have a sexual outlet to avoid pressuring their prospective brides into compromising situations. Prostitution rose to epidemic proportions in the immediate postwar period, as widows, single mothers, and working-class women had few other options to avoid starvation for themselves and their families. By some estimates, as many as half a million families lacked a father or husband in the home, due to imprisonment, exile, or deaths during the civil war and the repression that followed.30 Indeed, the state estimated that more than 75 percent of women involved in prostitution engaged in the practice because of economic desperation, while another 15 percent had been abandoned by the fathers of their children and therefore lacked respectable alternatives. Only 10 percent were prostitutes because they preferred a life of “vice and degeneration” over more accepted alternatives. There were more than one thousand officially tolerated brothels in the 1940s, with thousands more sex workers operating outside of government supervision. One newspaper calculated that there were as many as twenty thousand prostitutes in Barcelona alone. As a result of this tolerance, sexually transmitted diseases increased to epidemic proportions, constituting more than one-third of illnesses recorded by soldiers in 1940. The church’s resistance to contraception, including condoms, likely contributed to the dramatic rise in these afflictions.31 Many of the prostitutes came to the profession because of their political background, or that of their husbands. Repression after 1939 was severe on men and women who had identified with the Republic, whether as members of leftist political parties, or even as spouses of activists in the Communist, anarchist, or Socialist parties. The regime banned many of

29. Campo Alange, La Mujer en España, 309–24; YA, November 1, 1941. 30. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 94. 31. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 54–56, 60; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 54–55; Pastor Petit, Espionaje: La Segunda Guerra Mundial y España, 691; Richards, A Time of Silence, 167.


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these women from gainful employment, and as many were separated from their husbands through exile or imprisonment, they had few options other than black market activities or prostitution. The Nationalists already regarded feminist and pro-Republican women as “degenerate” and “ugly” for their public demonstrations for radical social change during the civil war and perhaps felt little pity after the conflict for those forced into this kind of tragic life. The state was suspicious of any women out alone at night and frequently arrested even those who were not prostitutes on this suspicion.32 The state estimated that 95 percent of prostitutes practicing without official sanction had contagious diseases, including not just syphilis and gonorrhea but also tuberculosis, typhoid, hepatitis, and other afflictions, although perhaps government officials exaggerated these statistics to dissuade potential customers. Women arrested for illegal prostitution could be imprisoned in special correctional facilities, where they would receive spiritual guidance, medical care, education, work training, and discipline to save them from their previous patterns. The state interned these women, arrested on the streets of major cities, in military-style camps and prisons, from which as many as 10 percent tried to escape, only to be recaptured by the military. From the beginning of the postwar period, the Catholic Church supported a prohibition on prostitution, but only in the mid-1950s did the government ban the practice. The final decision came only after a visit by the U.S. cardinal, Francis Spellman, who convinced Franco in 1956 that such a ban would improve Spain’s international reputation.33 The regime used every legal means to regulate behavior and family life, passing laws to criminalize male homosexuality, habitual illegal prostitution, pornography, abortion, adultery, and contraception, in addition to the traditional crimes of rape, incest, and corruption of minors. Regime authorities also banned the publication or distribution of sexual guides, even for married couples, as well as any form of sex education. The state tried to promote the importance of fathers, giving those with many children—more than four living at home—rent subsidies, hiring preference, and other privileges similar to those granted to disabled Nationalist soldiers and veterans. While these measures only benefited approximately one

32. Richards, A Time of Silence, 54–55, 64, 139. 33. Ecclesia, August 15, December 12, 1942; Díaz-Plaja, Anecdotario de la España Franquista, 157; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 54; Oscar Caballero, El Sexo del Franquismo, 135; Richards, A Time of Silence, 56.


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hundred thousand families, the message they sent was clear: large and intact families, headed by a father, were the regime’s preference.34 While some women may have chafed at the regime’s limitations on their opportunities, the image the SF presented in many ways conformed to reality. For example, the Women’s Section made it clear that it believed women, especially mothers, should not work outside the home except when necessary for survival. Married women could not work full-time, other than as caregivers in their own homes, without the permission of their husbands. Even then, if their family income rose far above the national average, the regime could order employers to dismiss married women. In fact, few women did work: only 9 percent of women in 1930 officially worked fulltime outside the home, and this percentage decreased during the depression and civil war. These numbers rose to 16 percent by the end of 1950, but even then only a tiny percentage of married women were working. At the time of the SF’s greatest prominence—during the Second World War— “. . . the vast majority of women in Spain did not hold regular, full-time employment.” The regime discouraged women from seeking jobs outside the home, and the Fuero del Trabajo (Labor Law) of 1938 specifically called for married female workers to leave their positions in “the workshop and the factory.”35 In family law, the state went even further. With the enthusiastic support of the church, the regime declared in August 1939 that all official acts of the Republic were illegitimate, including the tens of thousands of civil marriages performed from 1931 to 1939. All of the divorces decreed under the Republican law of March 2, 1932, were also declared illegal, leaving some Spaniards who had divorced and remarried in the precarious condition of bigamy. Married couples had to legitimize their civil unions in a church or lose their eligibility for government services, and those unfortunates who found themselves married to more than one person had to go before a judge and receive the blessing of the church to have their status resolved. In just one year, 1942, more than two thousand married couples renewed their vows in the church to legitimize their unions and

34. Caballero, El Sexo del Franquismo, 22–23, 37–38; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 94. 35. Victoria Enders and Pamela Radcliff, “Introduction to Part II: Work Identifities,” in Enders and Radcliff, eds., Constructing Spanish Womanhood, 125, 127–28; Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood, 36; Nash, Defying Male Civilization, 184; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 95.


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offspring, more than four thousand of whom had their status regularized before the law by their parents’ remarriage.36 Marriages within the military were further regulated by a decree that officers and noncommissioned officers had to be at least twenty-five to marry, had to choose single or widowed (not divorced) Catholic brides, and could only have spouses from Spain, Latin America, or the Philippines. Violations of any of these rules would lead to expulsion from the armed forces. Diplomats and employees of the Foreign Ministry also fell under the nationality restrictions and had to reside in Spain at least one out of every three years they served in the foreign service, presumably to prevent them from losing their attachment to the patria.37 Concern about the national identity of Spain went beyond marriages. The New State also banned “extravagant and exotic names” for children, such as Octubre (for the 1917 Bolshevik revolution), Libertad (Liberty, a term associated with workers), Libertario (Libertarian, an anarchist slogan), Progreso (Progress), and Flor de Guerra (War Flower), forcing parents to adopt traditional Christian names instead. For the unwilling, the state forced the change, giving each child the name of the saint of their birthday. Franco’s regime also limited parental choice in schools by banning coeducation in May 1939. Laws criminalizing contraception, family abandonment, adultery, divorce, and abortion followed this social measure. Women also lost rights they had under the 1931 constitution, including a legal existence apart from fathers or husbands.38 Restrictions on abortion also returned, after the more liberal policies of the Second Republic. Punishment for abortion was severe for doctors, nurses, and their assistants. For abortions conducted without the consent of the mother, a rare occurrence, the attending medical personnel could receive a prison sentence of several years. For abortions with the patient’s consent, those responsible for the operation could still face short prison sentences, a ten- to twenty-year ban from the medical profession, and fines of two thousand to fifty thousand pesetas. Despite the increased penalties, 36. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 38–39; Arriba, October 5, 1939; Ecclesia, January 23, 1943. 37. Arriba, December 1, 1940, July 12, 1941. 38. YA, July 11, 1939; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 70; Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 39; YA, January 25, 1941, March 13, May 10, 1942; Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 302; Arriba, February 2, 1941; Alcalde, La Mujer en la Guerra Civil Española, 112–13; Socieded Española de Historia de la Educacion, Mujer y Educacion en España, 1868–1975, 22.


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as many as 25 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion, the vast majority of these among impoverished married couples.39 In addition to discouraging contraception and abortion, the state also made a concerted effort to encourage large families with positive measures, hoping to reverse low fertility rates. For example, there were annual provincial and national competitions for the largest nuclear families. The two winners in each of the fifty provinces, colonies, and regions received one thousand pesetas, while the national winner received five thousand pesetas, equivalent to one year’s salary for a semi-skilled worker. Only married couples could enter the competition, and children had to be the natural issue of the husband and wife. In 1941, José Plata Alcaide and Salud Granados Pino, a couple from Cordoba, won with twenty-five children, although only fifteen survived infancy.40 The 1943 national prize went to Florentina Corral, a fifty-eight-year-old working-class woman in La Coruña, Galicia, who had eighteen living children. The state also created child subsidies for married couples, with the hope that this would ensure that women did not work. Falangist newspapers editorialized about the importance of large families for the prosperity of Spain, claiming that “the index of the greatness of a people is united with its index of population increase, together with the indices of health and intelligence of those beings which populate it. . . . We must combat nuptial abstention, Malthusianism . . . and also the pacifistic feminization which is characteristic of the decadent nations.”41 In 1945 the national prize increased in value, with the winning family, in this case Dolores Molina González and Ramón Vargas Moreno of Córdoba, receiving five thousand pesetas and a new house in which to hold their seventeen children. With this program, the Spanish state embraced and promoted the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church, which had for centuries advocated larger families and opposed any form of contraception.42 The New State hoped to revive traditional cultural values in the family and public life, wanting a clean break for what Nationalists saw as the licentiousness of the Second Republic. The Catholic Church, as well, was interested in promoting social conservatism, and pushed for the adoption of new laws and regulations at the provincial and national level. For example,

39. 40. 41. 42.

YA, February 2, 1941; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 53–54. Arriba, March 7, 9, July 3, 1941. Ibid., March 18, 1943, January 5, 1944. Ibid., March 17, 1945.


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women’s bathing suits had to cover the body from knee to neck, to avoid tempting Spanish men, and skirts could not rise above mid-calf. Even engaged couples had to bring chaperones with them on dates. Censorship of movies, books, and theater reinforced these values, with even hints of taboo subjects — adultery, premarital sex, religious or political dissent—cut from domestic productions or edited from foreign films. To promote moral regeneration, Franco banned Carnaval (the Spanish equivalent of Mardi Gras), dog tracks, and gambling in all its forms, except the state lottery.43 Despite her Catholic conservatism within Spain, Primo de Rivera advocated a pro-Axis and interventionist foreign policy. Throughout the period of the Second Republic, Spanish Civil War, and World War II, Primo de Rivera invariably sided with the factions of the Falange and Spanish government that were most radical, most revolutionary, and most proNazi. Along with other members of the SF, she was a tireless advocate of Spanish affiliation with the New Order. She was, despite being a female in a male-dominated regime, a significant political figure in the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Because of this, Nazi leaders hoped to use her influence and prominence to promote their own agenda in Spain. Despite her support for the Axis, Primo de Rivera was unwilling to accept all aspects of the Nazi worldview, and at times her insistence on Catholicism left German leaders wondering if she was an ally worth embracing.44 During the fall of 1940, Falangist syndical leader Gerardo Salvador Merino began reshaping the Falangist-controlled unions in Spain to resemble more closely the Nazi German Labor Front, or Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF). Inspired by the idea of forging the Spanish working class into an engine for genuine revolution, Salvador Merino asked for technical and organizational assistance from the DAF and Nazi Party. He also signed a series of agreements with Pilar Primo de Rivera on the status and supervision of female workers in the Sindicatos. The two had been close collaborators since early 1940, when she sponsored his first gathering of provincial syndical delegates in her Madrid offices. By these provisions, the two established joint controls in the leadership, political education, and social welfare of Spanish working women, an important set of agreements that solidified the alliance between the two Falangist leaders. Over the next year, Primo de Rivera and Salvador collaborated on an ed43. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 75–78; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 17, 70. 44. Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 127–28.


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ucation conference, the annual meeting in January of the SF, and the first Consejo Sindical (Syndical Council) meeting in Madrid, held in June 1941.45 Tension continued within the Falange over the next year, as Salvador Merino, Primo de Rivera, and other radical and pro-Nazi leaders clashed with more cautious and conservative figures in the government and military. These clashes finally came out into the open in May 1941. The event that precipitated the power struggle was Franco’s appointment on May 5 of Colonel Valentín Galarza to be the new Interior minister. Galarza, who had been instrumental in the organization of the military uprising of 1936, was a monarchist and very unsympathetic to Falangism. After a meeting between Pilar Primo de Rivera and other leaders of the Falange, her radical faction decided to oppose Franco on this issue. Furious at the selection of this man to supervise Interior, a ministry responsible for the press and censorship, many Falangist leaders resigned in protest, including Primo de Rivera. Complaining that the Falange had been transformed into a “languid organization,” in which the only genuinely revolutionary section was the Sección Femenina, Primo de Rivera’s chief protest was against “the almost complete absence of Falangists in State posts. From the most important positions the Falange is fought with every type of weapon, and the Secretariat, full of timid comrades, has not known how to confront these difficulties. Also, the [National] Delegations are totally ruined, as happened with the Militias and the Youth Front.” Only the Women’s Section remained true to its Falangist ideas and militancy, according to Primo de Rivera. Her brother, Miguel, also complained of a litany of difficulties.46 The results of the May crisis were dramatic. Faced with this mutiny, Franco entered into personal negotiations with some of the defectors, convincing Primo de Rivera to reclaim her leadership post and appointing her brother to be minister of Agriculture, despite his remarkable lack of experience in this field. Other radical Falangists also received plum jobs, 45. Legislación Sindical Española, vol. 1, edited by Antonio Bouthelier (Madrid: IEP, 1945), 485–87; Decree, December 14, 1940, vol. 2, November 1940–February 1941, 223–24, 233– 35, 250–52; Pueblo, July 30, 1940; Arriba, April 5, 1940, May 21, June 6, 1941. 46. Ramón Garriga, Franco-Serrano Suñer: Un Drama Politico, 114; Heleno Saña, Franquismo sin Mitos: Conversaciones con Serrano Suñer, 161; Serrano Suñer, Entre el Silencio y la Propaganda, 200; Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco (FNFF), vol. 2, Letter, May 10, 1941, Serrano Suñer to Franco; FNFF, vol. 2, Letter of resignation, May 1941, Pilar Primo de Rivera to Franco.


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and the short-lived rebellion ended as soon as it had begun.47 These personnel changes moved friends of Germany, including Pilar Primo de Rivera, into more significant positions than at any time in the Franco regime. Despite her acceptance of the reappointment, which showed her willingness to cooperate with Franco, Primo de Rivera did not deviate in her enthusiasm for Nazi Germany. She was an active supporter of recruiting for the Blue Division and also became an important founder of the Asociación Hispano-Germana, with Salvador Merino. Along with promoting friendship and closer ties with Germany, the Asociación sponsored cultural and political events, bringing artists, bands, guest lecturers, and Nazi dignitaries from Germany to demonstrate the achievements of the Third Reich and to discuss the place of Spain and “Europe in the New World Order.” Primo de Rivera organized and selected the nurses who went to the Soviet Union with the Blue Division, making sure that their professional background and political ideas were appropriate for their mission. She also met these nurses on their way to join the Blue Division, as well as upon their arrival back in Spain, encouraging their self-sacrifice and inquiring about conditions on the Eastern Front.48 On her own initiative, Primo de Rivera went on several visits to Germany as a guest of the Nazi Party. The first time during the war was in 1941, to show her support for the Blue Division. While in Germany, she visited the soldiers of the unit at the Grafenwöhr training base, met with Nazi leaders in Berlin and Munich, and visited with members of the Falange Exterior and SF affiliates among Spaniards living in the Third Reich. She traveled there again in 1943, distancing herself from Spanish accommodation with the Allies. These and other exchanges of personnel between Spain and Germany were among the most important tools in the promotion of the alliance between Falangists and Nazis. Despite the war, both parties continued to send delegations of militants and leaders to visit and inspect their counterparts.49 47. Orders, Decrees, and Laws, Francisco Franco, Ramón Serrano Suñer, and José Luis Arrese, May 19–29, 1941, BMFET, June 1, 1941; Orders, Decrees and Laws, Francisco Franco, Serrano Suñer and José Luis Arrese, May 31–June 14, 1941, BMFET, June 15, 1941; FNFF, vol. 2, May 9, 1941, Appointments of Civil Governors, 146–48. 48. Arriba, June 7, 25, July 18, 1942; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 139–42. 49. Informaciones, May 17, 22, 27, July 1, October 27, and November 11, 1941, January 14 and 22, 1942; Pueblo, May 27, June 19, July 1 and 7, August 5, September 2–3, 5, 11, 1941; Arriba, May 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 13, 25, June 6, 25, July 5, 24, August 6, 20–23, 26, 28, September 6, 10, 12, 15, 1941, February 19–22, 26–28, 1942, March 11–12, 1943.


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The annual SF conference became a rallying point for the most ardent Naziphiles. At the sixth annual gathering, held in January 1942, Falangist leaders expressed the most radical sentiments of the party: praising the 1492 expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella, advocating the entry of Spain into the war, and endorsing the presence of the Blue Division on the Eastern Front. One speaker, the propagandist and classics scholar Antonio Tovar, warned that if Spain wanted to gain any advantages in the war, it should not wait until the end of the conflict, as the winners would be able to dictate the European and African territorial settlement for years after the cessation of hostilities.50 The SF also lent legitimacy to German conferences throughout Europe, representing neutral Europe in gatherings of Axis and Axis-occupied nations. In addition to frequent cultural visits, such as by musicians and dancers, there were also many political conferences to which Spain sent delegations. Nazi organizations reciprocated, dispatching groups of Nazi girls to visit Spain. An important Nazi event attended by a Falangist delegation was the Europäischer Jugendverband (European Youth Congress), organized by the Hitler Youth and its Italian counterpart. Representatives of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Finland, Wallonia, Flanders, Denmark, Norway, and Spain attended this event, held in Vienna September 14–18, 1942. On the way to the conference, the Spanish group had a private visit with Pope Pius XII in Rome.51 Pilar Primo de Rivera headed the Spanish delegation, which managed to circumvent some of the original intentions of the Nazis, who wanted to show European support for the Third Reich. For the first time, the SF leader publicly dissented from National Socialism, and in Nazi-occupied territory. Invited to form a triumvirate with Germany and Italy, Primo de Rivera agreed, but then turned the conference of fourteen nations in an unexpected direction. While Nazi leaders had hoped to gain a condemnation of the Jews, the Spaniards managed to focus the conferees on other issues. After a contentious series of meetings with the other national delegations, Primo de Rivera gained passage of a bland statement affirming 50. Arriba, January 3, 6, 12, 13, 1942. 51. Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 467 (March 30, 1942); Arriba, July 4, August 29, September 12, 18–20, October 10, 1942, May 15, 20, 21, 23, June 9, 1943; National Archives and Records Administration, T81, Roll 894, 5485500–5485541; David Jato, La Rebelion de los Estudiantes, 323–27; AGA, SP 148; Verbal Notes and attached invitations from HJ and GIL leaders, September 3, 1942, German and Italian Embassies, Madrid, to FJ and SF leaders; Verbal Notes, September 7, 1942, MAE to German and Italian Embassies; Payne, The Franco Regime, 321.


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“faith in God and the values of the family, nation and Fatherland: honor, work and liberty” —with no mention of Jews. The broader intent behind this project, at least in the minds of some Spaniards, was to begin the process of European political integration. A confederation or federation of European states would replace the old balance of power, uniting the continent under German leadership. After this meeting, however, the Germans lost interest in uniting the youth of Europe, and the follow-up conference later that year in Madrid, dedicated to “Youth and Family,” was a decided flop. Only eight nations sent delegates to this meeting in December of 1942, at which the German delegate tried to blame the break-up of the traditional family on a Jewish-created generation gap.52 Ernesto Giménez Caballero, a prominent Spanish fascist writer and enthusiast for Primo de Rivera, also attended Nazi-sponsored conferences. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels attended one such meeting, a gathering of European writers in October 1941 in Weimar. In a private meeting with Magda Goebbels, wife of the Nazi leader, Giménez Caballero proposed that Hispano-German collaboration be sealed through the marriage of Hitler and Pilar Primo de Rivera. The Spanish writer believed that Primo de Rivera and Hitler, both unmarried, in their prospective union could represent a revived alliance between Germany and Spain, as had existed under the Habsburg Empire.53 As far as this potential marriage, in her memoirs Primo de Rivera took the idea seriously, only dismissing it because she valued her private life and did not feel herself worthy of such a mission. She never did marry, realizing that to do so would force her to end her leadership of the Sección Femenina. Significantly, even after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Primo de Rivera did not object to any of Hitler’s policies nor express any reservations about a man who had plunged Europe into war and caused the deaths of millions. Primo de Rivera was an enthusiastic supporter of Franco’s decision to send the Blue Division volunteers to serve in the German 52. Pilar Primo de Rivera, “Discurso de Pilar Primo de Rivera en el VII Consejo Nacional de la Sección Femenina de FET y de las JONS,” Discursos, Circulares, Escritos, Sección Femenina de F.E.T. y de las J.O.N.S., 61; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 147, 150–51; AGA, SP 148; Suárez Fernández, Francisco Franco y su Tiempo, vol. 3, 365–67; Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall, 131; AGA, P, SGM 57; Report, July 11, 1942, by Enrique Llovet, “La Situación en Alemania e Italia,” 12; Arriba, June 16, July 7, September 13, 20, 22, December 10, 12, 15, 1942; Informaciones, December 9, 15, 1942. 53. AGA, S, 7852; Deutsche Presse, April 25, 1942, NARA, Captured German Documents, T70, R132/F000889–000892; Arriba, April 14, October 2, 3, 4, 14, 24, 25, 27, 29, 1942; Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Memorias de un Dictador, 150–51; Douglas Foard, The Revolt of the Aesthetes: Ernesto Giménez Caballero and the Origins of Spanish Fascism, 98–100, 222.


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army on the Eastern Front, participating in a massive Madrid rally on June 24, 1941, to encourage enlistment by Spanish youth.54 She traveled to Germany in late August 1941 to observe the training of the Blue Division, offering her encouragement to the volunteers. While there, she met with Nazi leaders, escorted by Celia Giménez, a nurse and the leader of the Women’s Section of the Spanish Falange in Germany.55 Primo de Rivera encouraged Giménez, who had been in Germany since 1939, to take a position as an announcer for German radio, broadcasting daily to the sixteen thousand soldiers of the Blue Division and their families back in Spain. As the voice of the Blue Division, Giménez received thousands of letters monthly from soldiers in the unit and their relatives at home, asking her to convey messages or verify information about casualties. She became very popular among the soldiers of the Blue Division and Spanish workers in Germany, and Franco’s government named her unofficial cultural attaché to the Spanish Embassy in Berlin. Primo de Rivera invited the Berlin SF chief to visit Spain several times and sponsored public events to honor the families of Blue Division troops. Giménez felt comfortable enough in her relationship with Primo de Rivera that she addressed sensitive reports to her directly, such as when she discovered massive disorganization and a lack of initiative among the Spanish medical personnel caring for the wounded of the Blue Division and failures to inform their families about deaths and serious injuries. Primo de Rivera also received reports from the Spanish Red Cross about the same issues.56 During the summer of 1943 Primo de Rivera viewed Franco’s changing foreign policy, moving Spain from pro-Axis nonbelligerency to more genuine neutrality, with concern. She was worried that these shifts could lead to the restoration of the monarchy and the betrayal of the Falange. To indicate her ongoing support for the New Order, at the invitation of the German Embassy in Madrid she made a pilgrimage to the Third Reich during the summer of 1943 “with the end of getting to know the functioning of the institutions of the National Socialist Party.”57 On July 26 she flew

54. Primo de Rivera, Recuerdos de una Vida, 210; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 18; Arriba, June 25, 1941. 55. Arriba, August 20, 23, 26, 28–29, 1941. 56. AMAE, LegR1080/28; Report, November 30, 1941, by Celia Giménez to Pilar Primo de Rivera, Hoja de Campaña, November 11, 1942; Arriba, April 26, May 1, 6, 7, 1942, January 10, 13, February 6, 18, 20, June 19, 20, 1943; Rodríguez Jiménez, Los Esclavos Españoles de Hitler, 168. 57. AMAE, LegR1724/53, Verbal Note, July 23, 1943, from Cultural Attaché Petersen to Spanish Foreign Ministry; Suárez Fernández, Cronica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 161.


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to Berlin at the invitation of Nazi Auslandsorganization—AO (Organization for Germans Abroad) leader Ernst Bohle. Accompanied by her closest collaborators, Clarita Stauffer and María García Ontiveros, and other SF leaders, she made the trip a public statement of her support for closer Hispano-German ties. Celia Giménez, the leader of the Sección Femenina in Germany, AO leader Bohle, and Gaufrauenschaftsleiterin (District Women’s Leader) Ingeborg Niekerke, Primo de Rivera’s designated escort for this German visit, met the Spanish women at Templehof airport. During their five days in Berlin, the Spanish women met with many important Nazi leaders, including Bohle, Goebbels, Dr. Jutta Rüdiger, the leader of the Bund Deutscher Mädel—BdM (League of German Girls), Reichsjugendführer (Hitler Youth leader) Artur Axmann, Frauenschaftsführerin (Women’s Organization leader) Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, and former ambassador von Faupel. The Spanish ambassador in Berlin and representatives of the Falange in Berlin also received them. Their escorts took the Spanish women on a cruise of Lake Havel and to the Berlin hospital of the Blue Division, where they visited with wounded Spanish veterans of the Eastern Front. After Berlin, the group traveled to Munich and toured the Nazi Brown House, early headquarters for the party. Salzburg was their next stop, where Primo de Rivera met with Dr. Scheel, the leader of Nazi university students, and Spanish university students residing in the Austrian city. On August 4 their travels took them to Vienna as the personal guests of Gauleiter (District Leader) Baldur von Schirach. After visiting Stuttgart for two days, on August 8 Pilar Primo de Rivera and her entourage flew back to Spain.58 During the trip, Primo de Rivera and her female colleagues received celebrity treatment, meeting the gauleiter of every city they visited, staying in first-class hotels, and dining at the best restaurants. The Germans clearly wanted to impress the Spaniards with their hospitality, as a way to shore up their unraveling connections with Spanish political life. As an internal SF memo on the visit recounted, the Nazis could claim success. The National Delegate (Pilar Primo de Rivera), who received many generous gifts, and her companions, who also were cordially entertained during their travels through the various provinces of Germany, have 58. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 157–62; Suárez Fernández, Crónica de la Sección Femenina y su Tiempo, 157–58, 161; AGA, P, SGM 54; Report, n.d., “Informe del Viaje de la Delegada Nacional de la Sección Femenina a Alemania,” (María García Ontiveros?), Delegación Nacional de la Sección Femenina, Servicio Exterior. Gaufrauenschaftsleiterin ⫽ Female Leader of the Regional Women’s Organization (of the Berlin Nazi party). Medina, August 8, 1943.


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Spain during World War II brought back the greatest impression of their trip to the Reich, which served as one more witness to the amazing fondness and spirit of understanding that unites both National Movements, profoundly and sincerely demonstrated through the many examples of camaraderie and affection that, officially and unofficially, were continually given to them by the Authorities of the State and leaders of the German Nationalist Socialist Party.59

While the shifts in Spanish foreign policy were troubling to the Germans, the faith and support of Pilar Primo de Rivera must have been of some encouragement to them. Unfortunately for Hitler and the Third Reich, Pilar Primo de Rivera did not have the ear of Franco on foreign policy. While she remained a leader among those faithful to the common cause of the New Order, she was unable to influence Franco in any policy area unrelated to women’s issues. While Pilar Primo de Rivera showed her dedication to the New Order abroad, panic was erupting in the Falange in Spain as a result of the fall of Italian fascism in July and August 1943. Falangists feared a repeat of these events in Spain, followed by a restoration of the monarchy.60 Such a scenario did not develop in Spain, but some changes were inevitable. With the fortunes of war shifting in late 1943, Franco made the decision to withdraw the Blue Division. After exactly two years on the Eastern Front, the Spaniards turned their backs on Russia and began their march west. Initially believing they were only pulling back for a rest and refit, many of the soldiers were upset when the repatriation was finally announced to them on October 14, believing they were leaving unfinished business behind them. The withdrawal of the Blue Division also angered important Falangists. Pilar Primo de Rivera flew into a rage because of this action, loudly announcing to one of her subordinates that this was “a betrayal of the Falange and of Germany.” Her sentiments were not widely shared, however, and even within the Falange in 1943 there was a decided decline in enthusiasm for fascism and the New Order.61

59. AGA, P, SGM 54; Report, n.d., “Informe del Viaje de la Delegada Nacional de la Sección Femenina a Alemania.” 60. FNFF, vol. 4, 104/366–74, Report, August 17, 1943, “Informes Acerca de la Repercusión de la Caída de Italia en Medios Políticos Españoles.” 61. AMAE, R 2192/31, Letter, October 15, 1943, from Vidal to Jordana; FNFF, vol. 4, 155/479–82, Report, October 8, 1943, from Vidal to Jordana; AGA, P, SGM 43; Letters, October 6 and November 10, 1943, DNB to DNSE; FNFF, vol. 4, 158/491, Report, October 12, 1943, from Vidal to Jordana; Vadillo, Muñoz Grandes, 54; FNFF, vol. 4, 167/509, Letter, October 14, 1943, from Maria Dolores de Naverán to Luis Carrero; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 390.


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Primo de Rivera also became angry over the declaration in September 1943 by Falangist Secretary General José Luis de Arrese that Spain was not a totalitarian nation. Regarding this as a betrayal of the Movement and of the spirit of her deceased brother, she tried to summon a special session of the Junta Política of the Falange to dismiss Arrese. However, Franco supported Arrese and the content of his speech, and so her protest did not achieve the result she had hoped. She also disagreed with Franco’s withdrawal of the Blue Division, regarding it as treason against Falangist values.62 After the withdrawal of the Blue Division and the rapid decline of Nazi fortunes by early 1944, Primo de Rivera stopped her outspoken support for the Third Reich. Refocusing her efforts to promote traditional values among Spanish women and girls, she dedicated the foreign relations of the Women’s Section to closer ties with Portugal and, after the end of the war, Latin America and the Islamic world. Just as Franco realigned his foreign policy to accommodate the new realities, so too did Primo de Rivera, although far more reluctantly and slowly than the Spanish dictator. Instead of fascism, the Women’s Section advocated “Catholicism, conservatism and conformism.” Women were to be submissive to men, Primo de Rivera preached, even though she had resisted Franco and unabashedly attempted to move Spain into the Nazi orbit.63 Primo de Rivera’s interest in the Third Reich had been more than a temporary flirtation. From her initial involvement in the Falange during the period of the Republic and Spanish Civil War, she had always been in the faction of the movement that had urged closer ties and more collaboration with Nazi Germany. Even after the end of the Franco regime in 1975 and her dismissal from the leadership of the Women’s Section in 1977, she remained proud of her Falangism and wartime activities, unrepentant as late as 1991, the year of her death. That this enthusiasm did not lead to open Spanish affiliation was not due to her efforts, which could scarcely have been stronger on behalf of the Axis, but after 1945 perhaps she was relieved that this ambition never came to fruition. Pilar Primo de Rivera and her actions in the SF symbolized the conflict within the different tendencies in the Franco regime’s ideology. While

62. Letters, October 13 and 14, 1943, from María Dolores de Naverán to Luis Carrereo, and reports by Carrero, Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 500–509. 63. Payne, The Franco Regime, 290; Primo de Rivera, Recuerdos de una Vida, 211–14. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 324.


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supporting conservative Catholic social policies and excluding women from positions of political and economic responsibility, the regime also empowered the SF. Autonomous, active, and led by a living symbol of the Falange, the SF developed into more than an institution for training submissive wives for Francoist husbands. From its organization of sporting events to its creation of leadership academies and vocational training, the Women’s Section expanded its mandate far beyond initial expectations. While supporting the moral restrictions of the regime, the SF also provided an avenue for unmarried Spanish girls to learn, lead, and participate in public life—activities distant from the traditional Catholic view of women as meek and subservient housewives.


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Chapter 7 The Catholic Church

T

he Spanish Catholic Church emerged from the civil war on the winning side, but at a terrible cost. Republicans killed thousands of priests, nuns, and monks during the conflict and destroyed hundreds of churches, monasteries, and other religious institutions. Most Republicans, and especially the Left, had been fiercely anticlerical during the Second Spanish Republic, and these sentiments continued to dominate in government-controlled territory after the Nationalist uprising of July 1936. Except in the Basque Country, the Catholic Church ceased to function in the Republican zone during the war, as priests fled persecution or went into hiding, awaiting the arrival of Nationalist forces. The same was not true of the Nationalist zone under the leadership of Francisco Franco. In Nationalist-controlled territory, the church very quickly recovered its status, respectability, and property. After the end of the civil war, the Catholic hierarchy was a partner of the regime in censorship, cultural conservatism, anticommunism, and establishing the ideological foundations of the New State. The regime and the bishops shared enthusiasm for a “moral crusade” to reinvigorate Spanish culture, reversing the liberal clerical reforms and social policies of the Second Republic.1 Despite this close cooperation in many areas, tensions threatened the relationship between the church and the state, and the harmonious collaboration envisioned by both never emerged in complete form. Even with the 1. Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 28.

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enthusiastic Catholicism of the regime, differences over investiture, press restrictions, relations with Germany, and the totalitarian inclinations of the Falange established an unexpectedly strong undercurrent of mistrust and suspicion between Franco’s government and the Catholic Church in Spain. Fearing subordination to the regime, but also welcoming unprecedented support and official enthusiasm, the church developed an increasing ambivalence toward Franco’s government. While the Catholic Church did experience a significant revival during the Second World War, it was nonetheless unable to reverse the increasing secularization of the Spanish people. Seen as a tool of the Franco regime, it faced increasing difficulty in reaching a population pervaded by hostility to the dictatorship, and its progress in reconstruction, evangelism, and reconstitution remained limited. The Catholic Church in April 1931 had been willing to accept the new Republic, especially its promises of tolerance and religious freedom. As long as the church was free to be in the business of saving souls, free from direct persecution and allowed to pursue Christian education without interference, Catholic leaders argued, they could arrive at a modus vivendi with the Republic. This honeymoon was extremely short-lived, however. The church’s identification with the monarchy and the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–1929) alienated the urban and rural working classes, who saw religious institutions as handmaidens of oppression.2 The anti-Republican declarations of the Spanish primate, Cardinal Pablo Segura, cemented these views in early 1931. Segura, who praised the fallen monarchy and former King Alfonso XIII, remarked on how the ruler had “tried to preserve the ancient tradition of faith and piety of his ancestors,” and claimed that Spain had suffered “a severe blow” with the advent of the Republic. Segura’s denunciations of republicanism were so vitriolic that even the Vatican agreed he should leave Spain, which he did in May of that year, forced to resign his post and join the papal staff in Rome.3 That same month, anarchist mobs sacked and burned more than one hundred churches and religious buildings in attacks that the Republican government did little to stop. While no one died, and religious orders rather than parish churches had owned most of the targets, the Catholic Church felt under assault. The state’s refusal to protect the church caused anger in the hierarchy and among faithful Catholics. Republicans and

2. Gonzalo Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, 1931–1939, vol. 2, 16. 3. Frances Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy: The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1975, 180–81; William Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998, 274, 278– 79; José Andrés Gallego and Antón M. Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 13.


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Socialists swept the national elections of June 1931, defeating the poorly organized monarchists and Catholics most likely to defend religious practice, leaving the Church grimly anticipating anticlericals in power. While the Republicans promised “a free church in a free state,” their program went further than even pessimistic Catholics expected. The constitution and religious laws of 1931 and 1932 separated church and state, expelled the Jesuits, secularized cemeteries, closed religious schools, and over a twoyear period phased out the state religious budget, an allocation that provided the majority of the church’s income. The Republic went even further with the Law on Religious Confessions and Congregations in May 1933. This added to the separation of church and state enshrined in the 1931 constitution, granting complete religious liberty. In a move that the church saw as a contradiction of this promise, the state reserved the right to veto nominations to bishoprics of priests hostile to the Republic. The edict also designated church lands and buildings as state property, removed crucifixes from classrooms, struck religious instruction from the curriculum of public schools, and banned teaching by members of religious orders. The leaders of the Republic did not negotiate these laws with the Catholic hierarchy, which might have led to less open church resistance. Instead, the parliament acted alone, turning the church definitively against the Republic.4 With the declaration by Republican leader Manuel Azaña that “Spain has ceased to be Catholic,” the governing coalition attempted to break the influence of the church in the public sphere, despite the fact that close to a majority of Spaniards considered themselves affiliated with the church. “The intent of Republican policy was thus much more than mere separation of church and state. It was the subjugation of the church and the suppression of Catholic culture through the elimination of Catholic education, virtually all carried on by the orders. The following Article 27 [of the 1931 Constitution] stipulated further that all public manifestations of religion were subject to authorization by the state.”5 Resistance to this strident anticlericalism led to the organization of pro-Catholic political parties, gave impetus to the revival of Carlism, and encouraged committed Catholics to support the Nationalist uprising when it came in July 1936. Even though clerical parties served in some of the

4. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 180–83; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998, 292, 296, 300–305; La Iglesia en España (1936–1975): Síntesis Histórica, Boletín Oficial del Obispado de Cuenca, 1986, 6–7. 5. Stanley Payne, Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview, 155.


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governing coalitions of the Spanish Republic, most conservative Catholics never completely reconciled themselves to the enthusiastically secular democracy. Violence against the church continued during the years of the Republic, especially during the October 1934 leftist revolt in Asturias, when Socialists and anarchists killed thirty-four priests and seminarians and burned fifty-eight churches.6 While the church condemned the anticlerical measures of the Republic in a collective pastoral letter of December 1931 and in subsequent declarations and homilies, the state did not ban any church publications or associations, there was no mass exile of the bishops, and only the Jesuit order suffered expulsion, rather than all orders, as had been feared. The Republic even delayed until 1933 the closing of religious schools, having insufficient resources to build secular replacements for the more than 20 percent of Spanish students who studied in these institutions. Nonetheless, the church in 1936 was in serious financial and institutional trouble. Funding from the state, which had been sixty-six million pesetas in 1931, fell to less than 10 percent of that figure by 1933, and the number of priests declined from 32,446 to 29,902 over the same period. With tremendous efforts to raise money from the faithful, no churches closed during the Republic for lack of funds, but the institution was in crisis. In one parish, Vallecas, a poor suburb of Madrid, only 7 percent of the population in 1935 regularly attended mass on Sunday, 25 percent had never been baptized, and only 10 percent received last rites before dying. One of the greatest challenges of the Catholic Church remained its shortage of priests, the number of which declined to twenty-three thousand by 1940, where it stagnated until the 1950s, despite increases in members of religious orders.7 The Catholic episcopacy was not involved in planning for the rebellion of July 18, although some Carlist militia units had advance warning that it was coming. Of the major elements that rallied to the armed revolt—military officers, Falangists, large landowners, business leaders, monarchists, and Carlists—only the Carlists were enthusiastically and unquestionably clerical in their sentiments, “setting out to fight for God and Spain with chaplains at their side and Sacred Heart badges on their breasts.” Nonethe-

6. Ibid., 152–56, 160, 164–65; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 282–84, 286–87; Julián Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 34. 7. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 290–91, 330–31, 333; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 23; Guy Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista: 1. Los Actors del Juego Político, 28–29.


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less, non-Carlist “conservative Catholics” were also “natural allies” of the rebels. The Catholic faithful saw attacks on churches and convents in the summer and fall 1936 as an effort to begin a Soviet-style revolution in Spain and saw their only hope in supporting the Nationalists, who promised “to respect religion and restore order.”8 Church leaders did not take long to identify with the rebellion. Bishop Marcelino of Pamplona declared on August 23, 1936, that the uprising was a “crusade,” the first official use of this term by a Catholic leader. Bishop Pla y Deniel, of Salamanca, did the same in his Pastoral Letter of September 30, 1936, “The Two Cities,” signed by several bishops. The church leaders also denounced the Popular Front as “children of Cain” and declared Franco’s revolt to be a legitimate “armed plebiscite” of the people. The church hierarchy reaffirmed its endorsement of the Nationalist rebellion on July 1, 1937, in the “Collective Letter of the Spanish Episcopacy,” signed by the vast majority of bishops, which justified the civil war as an act of Christian self-defense. So decided and unequivocal was clerical support for the uprising that the church argued against any efforts to negotiate a diplomatic end to the civil war, preferring a total victory over the anticlerical Republicans.9 The church blamed the civil war on foreign influences, and not just those from the Soviet Union. Spain’s decline, according to Catholic leaders, had begun as far back as the eighteenth century. The replacement of the Habsburgs by the Bourbons as the royal dynasty after the War of Spanish Succession brought to power men who were captivated by French ideas about Enlightenment, realism, and regalism. “Atheistic and materialistic ideas triumphed . . .” “Spain was not just exhausted, but sick, dangerously sick.” With the French influence came Napoleon, and the loss of the colonial empire. This led to nineteenth-century liberalism and the Generation of ’98 and “their children: socialists, anarchists, and communists.” The civil war was “an invasion of Spain by an army of barbarians . . . [intent on] . . . the Sovietization of Spain and destroying its Hispanic identity.” To resist this and reclaim its identity Spain must “return to the past . . . Christian civilization.”10 8. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 198, 199; Payne, Spanish Catholicism, 168– 74; Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, vol. 1, 514–15; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 46. 9. Guliana Di Febo, Ritos de Guerra y de Victoria en la España Franquista, 28–29, 31–33; Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, 1931–1939, vol. 2, 72; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 44–45, 48. 10. Ecclesia, August 22, 1942.


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Catholic support became the most important pillar of the Nationalist cause, ensuring Franco’s eventual victory. The seven thousand Catholic priests, nuns, and monks killed by the Republicans during the conflict added impetus to the identification of the church with Franco’s forces. In the Republican zone as a whole, more than one-third of all clergy died from these attacks, with the percentage rising to one-half in some dioceses. While there was no central order from the Republican government directing these blows to the church, the government in Madrid did little to protect Catholic practice. Most of these assaults occurred during the first few months of the civil war, accelerating the identification of Catholics with the Nationalists. Indeed, it was the identification of the church with the war that transformed the conflict from a frustrated military coup to a broad-based religious crusade. It is not an exaggeration to claim that the civil war was a conflict “between, in general, defenders of the Church and its opponents.”11 Only in the separatist Basque Country did practicing Catholics support the Republic and continue to celebrate Mass, putting their faith in the decentralizing program of the Popular Front. The Republic’s grant of significant autonomy to Euzkadi also encouraged support for the government against the rebellion, as did the Nationalists’ ban on the use of any language other than Castellano Spanish.12 Basque bishops, as well, were among the few who refused to sign either of the two pastoral letters issued by the Spanish Church, and Basque military units were the only Republican forces to have official chaplains ministering to their troops. After the conquest of most of the Basque region in summer 1937, it became much easier for the Nationalists to claim to speak for all Catholics and to receive the support of the Vatican and wavering parts of the church elsewhere. On August 28, 1937, the Pope extended de facto diplomatic recognition to Franco’s government, granting an important measure of legitimacy to the regime. Although the Caudillo punished the Basques by banning their language and arresting priests who had supported the Republicans, he also granted more privileges to the broader church. The dictator rewarded the loyalty of non-Basque Catholics, reversing in the first year of the civil war almost all of the anticlerical legislation of the Republic, and gave the church authority and status unprecedented in modern Spain. For the church, “the victory of Franco’s army in the war brought about 11. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 5; La Iglesia en España, 8. 12. Andrés Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 28–29.


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the absolute triumph of Catholic Spain. Catholicism became once again the official religion of the state. All the republican measures that the church and the Right had condemned were repealed. The church began at that moment to live a long period of complete happiness, with a dictatorship that protected it, restored its privileges, defended its doctrines and destroyed its enemies.”13 Also in 1938, Franco ordered the reinstallation of crucifixes in all classrooms and granted more church influence over education. Furthermore, he allowed the Jesuits to return to Spain, after seven years of exile, and restored to them their property, institutions, and privileges. For this tremendous gesture, Father Wlodimir Ledochowski, the superior general of the Jesuits, added Franco’s name to the list of founders and greatest benefactors of the Society of Jesus. The order became one of the most enthusiastic in its support for Franco, with “99 out of 100 Jesuits, ‘from Asturias to Andalucia’” endorsing the regime and the revival of Catholicism that it brought. Catholic theology and teaching became an essential part of education, from the primary grades to the university level.14 Despite this official favor after the war, the church had still to recuperate from the accompanying damage. The extent of destruction visited on the church by the Republicans was severe. In Madrid alone, during the first three days of the civil war anticlerical mobs destroyed 35 percent of the churches. In Barcelona, anarchist and anticlerical mobs set fire to more than eight hundred churches, chapels, and other religious buildings. During almost three years of war, Republicans had burned and destroyed more than five thousand churches and religious buildings. Losses of personnel were even more severe. By the end of the war, Republicans had killed 13 bishops, 4,184 diocesan priests, 2,365 members of male religious orders, and 283 nuns. This was in addition to the lay Catholics killed for their faith during the same period. Anarchists and others who wanted to eliminate the Catholic Church from Spanish life were chiefly responsible for these murders. Religious practice in the Republican half of Spain was suspended for almost three years and so had to be revived from nothing once the war ended. While Catholic priests held sporadic underground

13. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 102–3, 215; Clark, The Basques, 80–81; Di Febo, Ritos de Guerra y de Victoria en la España Franquista, 28; Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, vol. 2, 143; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 14–15, 304. 14. Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 678; Payne, The Franco Regime, 207; La Iglesia en España, 25, 49; Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista, 181.


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services, especially in Barcelona, where they delivered as many as two thousand masses per day, elsewhere clergy were unable to emerge from hiding without risking martyrdom.15 In the Nationalist zone during the civil war, churches experienced dramatically higher attendance at mass and religious events, portrayed by Catholic leaders as “a renaissance of an age of faith that definitively had been judged as lost.” While part of this came from the realization that church attendance would be a “badge of loyalty” to the regime, there does seem to have been a sincere revival of faith. Part of this was a function of the geography of the war; church attendance and lay involvement historically had been strongest in Galicia, Navarre, Leon, Old Castile, and the Basque country, and only the last of these was partially occupied by the Republicans during most of the war.16 Also during the war, Franco ordered the reintroduction of religious instruction in all schools and promised to restore state financial support for the church after the end of the conflict. In 1938 he also decreed that blasphemy against God and the Catholic faith were crimes, punishable with prison sentences for the worst offenses. With these measures, the dictator earned the gratitude of the Catholic faithful, gaining legitimacy and favor in their eyes as a patron of the church and enemy of their enemies. Such acts as introducing more restrictive beachwear guidelines, attacking Freemasonry, and banning the celebration of Carnaval (called a “pagan festival” by the church) endeared Franco to many active Catholics.17 Franco’s personal faith and devotion to the church were evident in his life. His open support for the Catholic worldview had a direct impact on his political activity, as he himself stated in 1943, “The Catholic interpretation of life, its great respect for liberty and human dignity and the pure Spanish stock of its institutions are the characteristics of our regime.” While occasionally disagreeing with the policies of the regime, most Spanish clergy nonetheless viewed Franco as a genuine ally, believer, and true son of the church. No national leader in modern Spanish history made as

15. Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, vol. 2, 20; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 77, 102; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 358, 363; Andrés Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España contemporánea, 12; William Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’” 16. Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain’”; Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 36. 17. Ecclesia, February 15, 1941, July 4 and 11, October 24, 1942, February 5, 1944; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 341, 368–69, 467; Andrés Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 34; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 246.


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much effort to reshape Spain in the direction of traditional Catholicism as the Caudillo. Despite his identification with Catholicism, “Franco had no wish to see the regime become a confessional state” and made sure to retain some distance between the government and the church. With all of the enthusiasm engendered during the civil war and the immediate postwar period for Franco and revived Catholicism, the church hierarchy sometimes had to temper popular religious sentiments, as with its insistence that newspapers and magazines should not report allegedly miraculous events or sightings without the prior approval of the church, because if later discredited by the Catholic hierarchy, these events could damage the faith.18 The end of the war brought relief and initial euphoria to the Catholic Church. Within hours of Franco’s victory on April 1, 1939, Pope Pius XII sent a congratulatory and encouraging telegram to the Caudillo and fifteen days later made a Spanish-language radio broadcast to express his support for the New State: “Raising our heart to the Lord we give sincere thanks for Your Excellency’s greatly anticipated Spanish Catholic victory, and we also express our desire that this much loved country, having attained peace, will embark with renewed vigor upon its ancient Christian traditions, in which it has achieved so much. With these effusive sentiments we send to Your Excellency and to all of the noble Spanish people our apostolic blessing.” Also in this message, written by Pius XII himself, the pope hailed Spain as “the nation chosen by God as the principal instrument for the evangelism of the New World and as an impregnable bastion of the Catholic faith.”19 On behalf of grateful Catholics, on May 20, 1939, Cardinal Isidro Gomá, primate of Spain, accepted a victory sword from Franco in a ceremony at the Church of Santa Barbara in Madrid. This event celebrated the union of state and church under the regime, and their common cause, the crusade against Marxism and unbelief during the civil war. Church leaders believed that Franco’s victory was theirs, a triumph in a “war of religion” of “the forces loyal to God against unbelievers, atheists, agnostics and materialists.”20 18. YA, October 2, 1943; Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 36; Ecclesia, December 21, 1939. La Iglesia en España, 29. 19. Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 225; Gómez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia, 120; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 113; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 118. 20. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 203; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain,’” 491; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 118.


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Still, the Vatican was a sometime reluctant partner of Franco, maintaining offices in the Republican zone almost to the end of the war, encouraging a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and urging better treatment of the Basques and political prisoners. The Holy See also regretted its 1929 treaty with Mussolini and 1933 Concordat with the Third Reich, believing it had granted too many concessions to these fascist states, and not wanting to make the same mistake with Spain. The Spanish episcopacy did not share these views and argued Franco’s case to the Holy See and Papal nuncios. Pius XI, until his death in early 1939, and his successor Pius XII, who took office in March of that year, were concerned about the ideological proximity of the New State to fascism and Nazism, but nonetheless far preferred the pro-Catholic attitude of the Franco regime to the anticlerical Second Republic that it replaced.21 Some of Pius XII’s concerns proved well founded, as Cardinal Gomá learned in August 1939. The regime banned the publication of the primate’s first postwar pastoral letter, “Lessons of the War and the Duties of Peace,” regarding its mild criticism of excessive state power and his call for Catholics to hold the government accountable for mistakes as a direct challenge to the Francoist state. Gomá’s call for increased social justice, movement toward national reconciliation, and modest political reforms were not something Franco was willing to hear so soon after his victory, and so Falangist censors prohibited the republication of the pastoral letter, which had already been published in the bulletin of the archdiocese of Toledo. The rest of the bishops, however, refused to obey this order, and many reprinted the pastoral letter in their diocesan newsletters. Gomá himself became somewhat disillusioned about the regime after this unexpected treatment, but in the last year of his life he did not make these ill feelings public.22 Despite these early tensions, church leaders were collaborators in the repression that followed, denouncing those who had targeted churches, priests, and religious institutions. According to the “Law of Political Responsibilities,” ordered by Franco on February 9, 1939, it became a crime to have belonged to any organization of the Popular Front, as far back as October 1, 1934. Punishment for mere membership in leftist parties could

21. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, 326; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 207–9; La Iglesia en España, 16–17. 22. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 215–16; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 214; Preston, Franco, 342; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 119; Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 41.


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include confiscation of property or loss of civil rights. The church did not propose a general amnesty, mass pardons, or release of prisoners, considering those charged by the regime as enemies of religion. Indeed, the Catholic hierarchy classified identification with the Republic as a sin and encouraged the guilty to confess, repent, and be redeemed through the church. Occasionally, however, individual priests intervened to help those Republicans who had sheltered clerics, hid relics, or prevented attacks on the church, and in these cases, “the testimony of clerics had a decisive value in regards to other authorities.”23 After the end of the war, the first few years of peace saw a great upsurge in Catholic practice in Spain—more people attended Mass than in many decades, churches were rebuilt, “and virtually every measure of index of religious practice rose.” The Catholic Church saw its role, and that of lay organizations such as Acción Católica, Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas, Editorial Católica, and Opus Dei, as the “rechristianization of Spain,” which for eight years had been assaulted by anticlerical forces. The Franco regime gave major support to the revival of Catholicism, committing to meeting most financial needs of the church by restoring the pre-1931 formula of direct assistance, and also restoring the official status of chaplains for the state and military. Franco also directed the rebuilding or repairing of more than three thousand churches and religious institutions, establishing funding for this endeavor in early 1941 as a regular part of the budget. Private donations, especially in the major cities, also paid for much of the rebuilding program.24 These measures were tremendously expensive, with cost estimates for the repair of damaged religious buildings at more than forty million pesetas and the annual church budget running almost one hundred million pesetas. By far the largest share of these financial resources, paid almost entirely by the state, went to current salaries for more than thirty thousand priests, monks, and nuns. Among the Spanish priestly class in 1943 were 61 prelates (bishops and archbishops), 432 metropolitan cathedral clergy, 41 palace chaplains, 17,473 parish clergy, 1,611 nuns, and 814 sacristans. The highest-paid religious figure was the archbishop of Toledo, who received annual payment of forty thousand pesetas, about ten times larger than what a semi-skilled worker could earn, and thirteen times larger

23. Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 16, 247, 253–54; Richards, A Time of Silence, 7, 27. 24. Payne, Spanish Catholicism, 182; Francisco Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España: La Revista Ecclesia entre 1941 y 1945, 42; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’”


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than the average salary for a parish priest, who typically drew approximately three thousand pesetas per year. Nuns were at the bottom of the salary schedule, collecting the paltry annual sum of 275 pesetas, equivalent to one month’s working-class salary. Expenses for worship and religious services were just more than nine million pesetas per year, while seminaries spent slightly less than three million. Repair of churches, at 1.5 million, and support for parents of priests killed in the civil war, at 1 million, were the only other expenses greater than 150,000 pesetas.25 The regime also supported the public rituals of the church, suffusing them with political as well as theological content. This increased emphasis came under attack from Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer, exiled during the civil war for his refusal to support the Nationalist uprising. Vidal argued that Catholic practice under Franco consisted primarily in the promotion of ostentatious acts of Catholicism, pilgrimages to Pilar (a basilica consecrated to Mary in Zaragoza), enthronings of the Sacred Heart, solemn funerals for the fallen, and, above all, beginning all propagandist activities with campaign Masses, which they have abused. These external manifestations of religion, more than just being acts of religious affirmation, at the same time constitutes a political reaction against the persecuting laicism of the previous period, and at the same time will produce very ephemeral religious fruit, running the danger in resulting in hatred for religion by the indifferent and those who preferred the earlier conditions.26

The cardinal’s letter, sent to Pius XII in early 1940, had little impact, especially as the new pope embraced these activities as representative of a revived Spanish Church. Countless processions, festivals for local patron saints, and pilgrimages involved hundreds of thousands of Spanish Catholics — a visible sign, welcomed by the hierarchy and the Vatican, that faith was on the rise. The church could point to events such as the March 1939 gathering of three hundred thousand worshipers to celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Madrid as evidence that a significant upsurge in faith was happening in Spain.27

25. Ecclesia, July 4, 1939, March 27, September 11, 1943; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 104; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 441. 26. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 120. 27. Angela Cenarro, “Elite, Party, Church: Pillars of the Francoist ‘New State’ in Aragon, 1936–1945”; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’”


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Although there was significant reliance on the old traditions, festivals, and rituals of the church, the bishops were innovative in some areas. One method used was the popular mission, which involved mass revivals in urban areas, led mostly by the religious orders rather than by local diocesan priests. These missions, which brought priests into the schools, factories, government offices, and other areas where people congregated, brought about thousands of conversions and rededications. After a period of intense religiosity in the cities receiving the mission, however, the initial enthusiasms often waned over time for little net result.28 Another important element in the revival of Catholic practice was the activity of Acción Católica, a conservative association of lay leaders, youth, and women. Although it had been strong during the middle years of the Republic, the civil war had devastated its ranks, forcing the ruling council to reconstitute itself in early 1940. Cardinal Gomá ordered the reorganization of this body, the Junta Técnica Nacional de la Acción Católica Española, on March 18, 1940, appointing as its head Alberto Martín Artajo. As one of the few civil organizations not integrated into the Falange, Acción Católica had to make clear its nonpolitical intent, something declared by the Junta in the first issue of Ecclesia: Acción Católica is a strictly spiritual institution . . . The general regulations of Acción Católica limit its mandate to the sphere which corresponds to the Church, and prohibit interference in the sphere of Caesar, ordering its elements to abstain from any political action. That is not to say that they renounce the defense of the rights of God and the Church from wherever they should be attacked. Neither does this impede its members, outside of the organizations of Acción Católica, and in their status as private citizens, from participating in political parties which are not opposed to Catholic principles, exercising honestly their civic rights.29

With the support of Franco, who praised the reconstitution of the organization, and the initial efforts of Cardinal Gomá to appoint leaders and gain permission for publications, Acción Católica (AC) enjoyed great autonomy in its extensive work. AC successfully argued that its activities were essential because of the shortages of priests, which necessitated lay leaders taking a more active part in church life and practice. Most priests and bishops shared the interest of AC in dedicating themselves to Catholic 28. Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’” 29. Ecclesia, January 1, 1941.


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worship and ministries. Many of these religious leaders were relieved to be free from the demands of political activity during the Republic, when believers had to fight to preserve their traditions and faith. In many ways, AC became more important during the early years of the regime, as it was the only remaining independent mass Catholic organization in Spain, whereas under the Republic there had been dozens of political parties and movements dedicated to defending the faith. With Catholic parties and unions absorbed into the Falange, “the dioceses concentrated all their energies on the only association allowed by the state.”30 The first major postwar campaign of AC began in 1941 and focused on the revival of Spanish seminaries, the number of which declined by 40 percent during the Second Republic and even more during the recent military conflict. The effort, “Pro Seminario,” tried to recruit new seminarians and restore the buildings of Spain’s institutions for training priests. Republican mobs had destroyed many seminaries during the civil war, which compounded the ongoing shortage of priests. There was an initial surge of applications to seminaries, and youthful members of AC entered the priesthood in larger numbers, embracing the austere and ascetic life of the church. From 1934 to 1952, the number of seminarians increased from two thousand to eight thousand, a fourfold increase. Even this temporary surge, however, did not make up for the ongoing personnel losses in the church.31 After efforts to rebuild seminaries and other church buildings, Acción Católica devoted itself to helping the underclass in Spain. The need was great, as Ecclesia remarked in the winter of 1940–1941: “Despite the worthy efforts of public and private institutions, the number and the suffering of the poor increases in this second winter of our postwar and that of the European war.” AC members contributed money, food baskets, meals, and other gifts to the hungry and deprived, but needs always outstripped supplies. Acción Católica also collected a special offering in late 1944, in the name of Pius XII, for war victims throughout Europe, a fund-raising campaign that gathered twenty-four million pesetas, including a special donation of two million from the Franco regime.32

30. Ecclesia, January 1, 15, 1941; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain’”; La Iglesia en España, 25; Cenarro, “Elite, Party, Church.” 31. Ecclesia, January 15, 1941; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 89–90, 92–93, 95–96; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 120; La Iglesia en España, 37–38. 32. Ecclesia, February 15, 1941, January 2, 1943, August 12, October 14, 1944.


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Another way Acción Católica raised funds was through the sale of membership certificates in the organization, known as the “Tarjeta de Acción Católica.” These cards were initially voluntary, and designated in amounts according to the ability and willingness of the subscribers, including denominations of 1,000, 750, 500, 250, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 or 1 peseta. Of the funds raised through this means, 25 percent went to Acción Católica, 60 percent to the diocese where purchased, and 15 percent to the parish of the member. The initial campaign was not particularly successful, and so within a few months possession of the card became mandatory for men, women, and youth members of AC. More successful was the national propaganda campaign launched in 1941–1943, which resulted in the publication of almost twenty books, more than one hundred thousand pamphlets, and one million flyers promoting Catholic doctrine and informing the faithful about religious events and ideas.33 Spanish membership in Acción Católica grew significantly during the Second World War. By 1946 there were almost 450,000 members in all sections of the organization. In just one region, Aragon, AC increased its membership from 5,550 in 1939 to 14,000 in 1944. Four sections made up the organization: male youths, female youths, female adults, and male adults. The women’s section grew from approximately fifty thousand in 1939 to eighty thousand by 1944. There were far fewer men involved, with membership growing from nineteen thousand in 1943 to just more than thirty thousand in 1944. Conversely, in the youth section males were more numerous. In 1940–1941 there were only six thousand girls affiliated with AC, including Franco’s daughter, Carmen Franco Polo, but more than one hundred thousand boys, numbers that grew by almost 20 percent from 1941 to 1942.34 Opus Dei, another Catholic lay organization, grew in influence and numbers at the same time as AC, especially among the middle and upper classes. Despised by the Falange, who believed that the organization’s “secret statutes and hierarchy of members was a Catholic mirror image of Freemasonry,” Opus Dei became even more important in the 1950s and 1960s as a source of technocrats and government officials for the regime. Basing its ideology on the teachings of José María Escrivá, who founded the organization in 1928, lay members of Opus Dei believed in 33. Ibid., July 4, 1942, January 16, March 6, 1943. 34. Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista, 224; Ecclesia, April 1, 1941, January 17, February 7, 1942, January 30, 1943; Cenarro, “Elite, Party, Church.”


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the principles of personal piety, strict morality, and obedience to authority, “discipline, hierarchy, intransigence . . . [and] . . . sanctification through work.”35 Acción Católica and the church were particularly concerned with the youth of Spain, whom they regarded as excessively influenced by secular thinking, internationalism, and atheism. Using its increased role in public and private schools, as well as influence over the content of radio, AC youth programs, children’s publications, leisure-time activities, comic books, and movies, the church promoted a renewal of traditional values, orthodox Catholicism, sexual morality, and antimodern sentiments among the young. The regime made all forms of media available to the church (subject to political considerations), and the bishops made full use of these resources, as well as unparalleled access to the institutions of the state, to promote its beliefs and concerns. These values, which began to be an integral part of classrooms as early as the civil war, would remain the basis for the spiritual education of Spanish children to the end of the regime. Essential in this effort was the radio network of the church, consisting of several dozen stations throughout Spain. Among the values promoted on the radio and in publications was devotion to Francisco Franco as the legitimate ruler of the nation, described in children’s textbooks as “the man of providence, chosen by God to lift up Spain.”36 The church was a strong supporter of the general line of Franco’s policies during World War II, endorsing the “providential work of the Chief of State.” Catholic leaders remained, however, bitter enemies of the Falange. Despite the pro-Catholic sentiments of the party, which contrasted strongly with the anti-Catholicism of the Nazi Party, the church hierarchy remained suspicious of the movement. Even while being gratified for the active participation of many Falangist members in services, the Catholic leadership noted with some trepidation the Falange’s support for totalitarianism, Nazi Germany, and the sympathies some activists had expressed for the anticlerical and secularizing reforms of the Republic.37 35. Carr, Spain: 1808–1975, 701–2; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 226–30; Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista, 265–67; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 123. 36. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 116–17; La Iglesia en España, 39, 49–50; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 118. 37. Ecclesia, January 1, 1941; Marquina Barrio, La Diplomacia Vaticana y la España de Franco, 186, 244; Alfonso Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 54–55; Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 73–74.


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While enthusiastically supporting the Nationalist war effort as a crusade and endorsing the Franco regime, the Catholic publication Ecclesia made it clear that “the state could not be totalitarian” if it wanted to receive the support of the church. Cardinal Gomá, while acknowledging that many believers were members of the political party, nonetheless did not regard the Falange as “a Catholic force.” Even the clear expression of the Falange’s “resolute faith in her Catholic and imperial mission” in the party’s platform, and praise by Falangists for “the glories of the Church,” did not appease misgivings in the church. Enthusiasm for Catholic doctrine, particularly strong in the Sección Femenina, came along with interest in Nazi ideology and organizations, something the church did not welcome. Even the attachment of priests and religious advisers to the Sección did not allay the fears of the church hierarchy, despite the endorsement of Falangist institutions by priests such as the Benedictine Brother Justo Pérez Urbel, personal confessor to Pilar Primo de Rivera, and spiritual adviser to the Falangist university organization.38 Even more disturbing to the church were efforts by the Spanish and German governments to create an accord governing cultural relations. On January 24, 1939, representatives of Franco’s Foreign Ministry and the German embassy signed such an agreement, promising to promote “mutual knowledge of the culture and spiritual life of the two nations.” The accord allowed for the creation of institutions in each country to promote the values of the other, encouraging educational exchanges of teachers and students, language teaching, translation and publication of literary works, and increased collaboration in the film industry.39 This raised a storm of protest from the church, a protest that would cause the abandonment of this agreement. As soon as they discovered Spain and Germany had agreed to this treaty, Cardinal Gomá and Gaetano Cicognani, the Papal Nuncio, compacted to oppose its ratification by the cabinet ministers. In a letter to Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, the minister of education, Gomá complained about the agreement, stating his fear that it could “deform the characteristic features of our distinct civilization, whose distinction and force is Catholic thought.” The peril of “the present 38. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 201; Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España: La Revista Ecclesia entre 1941 y 1945, 45–46; Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista, 217–18; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 143; Payne, The Franco Regime, 204; Victoria Enders, “Nationalism and Feminism: The Sección Femenina of the Falange.” 39. AMAE, LegR4873, Expediente 46, “Convenion sobre la Colaboración spiritual y Cultural entre España y Alemania,” January 24, 1939.


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currents of German thought” could through this agreement “penetrate into the Spanish soul.” The Spanish primate asked the minister to do everything in his power to put an end to this accord, to move Catholic Spain away from the “danger” of “the exchanges that could be established between both nations in the cultural order.”40 Most cabinet ministers saw the agreement as merely a normalizing of already existing cultural exchanges, and most correspondence relating to the treaty referred to it as one covering “student exchanges.” In a meeting between Gomá and Sainz Rodríguez, the education minister attempted to calm the cardinal’s fears, arguing that this was just a ratification of the current high number of exchanges between the two nations, and that it would allow Spain to open cultural centers in Catholic areas of Germany. Gomá remained unmoved and wrote a letter to Franco complaining of the treaty. The Vatican also became involved in the dispute, with the Papal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, expressing to the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See the “profound pain” and “exceptional gravity” caused by this accord. Cardinal Pacelli, who had served as a Vatican diplomat in Germany, was particularly concerned about plans to send Spanish students to learn in the Third Reich, where they would no doubt be indoctrinated with “pagan and anti-Christian” ideas. Pope Pius XI had expressed similar sentiments to the Spanish ambassador, along with his disappointment that the Spanish press had not published his denunciations of Nazism.41 Gaetano Cicognani protested vigorously to Foreign Minister Jordana in a meeting on January 26 and in a subsequent diplomatic note on February 4. The Nuncio argued that all of the planned cultural exchanges of students, teachers, study trips, translation of German works into Spanish, and associated activity “included great dangers for the Faith,” and insisted that the Vatican would never accept the agreement, no matter how modified or rewritten it might be. Opposition of the church came primarily from fears that Nazi anticlericalism would spread to Spain, although given Franco’s personal dedication to Catholicism this was unlikely. The case of Italy, which had a similar agreement with the Third Reich and was coming increasingly under the ideological influence of Nazi racial theory, paganism, and anti-Semitism, were examples of what could happen to a

40. Antonio Marquina, “La Iglesia Española y los Planes Culturales Alemanes para España,” 356. 41. Ibid., 358; AMAE, LegR4873, 46, Letter, February 14, 1939, Foreign Minister to Education Minister.


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Catholic state that signed such an accord, although Spanish leaders did not express concern over German anti-Semitism, except in the case of Jews who converted to Christianity.42 Frustrated at the continued insistence of cabinet ministers, including Jordana and Sainz, that there was no danger in this agreement, Gomá wrote an extensive letter to Franco on behalf of the Spanish episcopacy, detailing the pagan and anti-Christian views of the Nazis, which would soon have easy entrée into Spain with the new cultural treaty. Initially Franco remained unmoved by this entreaty, as did Interior Minister Serrano Suñer, even though the latter expressed some concerns about the agreement as well. The cumulative effect of pressure from the Spanish bishops and the Vatican achieved success; Franco’s government delayed ratification in spring 1939, and by the end of the year the new foreign minister, Juan Beigbeder, informed the German ambassador that this delay would be postponed indefinitely. Spain never ratified the accord.43 Even after the defeat of the Hispano-German cultural treaty, tensions between the church and regime continued, especially over the totalitarian impulses of the Falange. The most vocal opponent of the Falange within the church was Cardinal Segura, archbishop of Seville, who had been expelled from Spain by the Second Republic for his antidemocratic and monarchist declarations. With the Nationalist occupation of Seville in the civil war, he was able to return to his See, but he did not entirely reconcile with the Franco regime. He was one of the few bishops willing to condemn Nazi Germany in a direct fashion, and Segura criticized the fascistization of Spain, which he saw as taking place under the Falange’s direction. On April 2, 1940, Segura attacked the frequent “cultural exchanges” between Germany and Spain, believing these would increase the influence of Nazism on Spanish society. The Falange considered Segura their worst enemy in the church, and the archbishop caused Franco nearly as much trouble as he had the Republic.44 In 1940, Segura came into open conflict with the Falange on several issues. The cardinal prohibited the posting of the names of fallen soldiers on the walls of the cathedral of Seville, to which Falangists replied by painting slogans on the exterior walls of the Episcopal palace. Segura also successfully forbade the name of José Antonio Primo de Rivera from being placed on the walls of the cathedral, even though hundreds of other 42. Marquina, “La Iglesia Española y los Planes Culturales Alemanes para España,” 359. 43. Ibid., 361–63. 44. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 378, 394–95.


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churches had permitted it. In April 1940 Segura issued a stern pastoral letter, “written in heroic tone and arguing that bishops and priests were not state functionaries, and that even a Catholic state had no right to impinge upon ecclesiastical autonomy.” In a sermon given in Seville’s cathedral, Segura commented that the term “caudillo,” Franco’s leadership title, historically referred to “captains of thieves” and was, according to St. Ignatius of Loyola, another word for “devil.” Franco became furious at this news and briefly considered expelling Segura, but was talked out of it by Serrano Suñer, who feared such an action could lead to a break in relations with the Vatican. Segura continued to be an irritation to Franco even after this crisis, refusing to appear in public with the Caudillo, even during the important Holy Week processions in Seville. While few other bishops echoed Segura’s public pronouncements, his views reflected growing unease among the church hierarchy about the more extreme elements of the Falange.45 Instead of totalitarianism, the church advocated corporatism, in which the state would play a minimal role (defense, currency, justice, internal security) and everything else would be in the hands of corporations (the church, voluntary associations, mercantile corporations, syndicates, and municipalities) in a system inspired by and resembling medieval guilds and religious cofraternities. Even when church leaders began to believe that the Nazi-led New Order might emerge triumphant in Europe, especially in 1940–1941, their acceptance of totalitarian ideas remain limited, and always conditioned on the continuing autonomy of the church in matters ecclesiastical and related to education. Nazi efforts to subordinate the German churches were not appropriate to Spanish traditions, according to Catholic leaders.46 It was the pro-Nazi sentiments of many Falangists that most offended the Catholic leadership. Church leaders, for example, protested strongly against the Falangist practice of giving the fascist salute during religious services and ceremonies. While both the Falange and most bishops tried to downplay disagreements, these still existed behind the scenes. Attempts by both party and church newspapers to emphasize the Christianity of Mussolini and Hitler were a transparent effort to find common ground. While many bishops were comfortable with Franco’s dictatorship, the total-

45. Preston, Franco, 352–53; Thomàs, La Falange de Franco, 215; Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 216–18. 46. Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 64, 117, 124–25, 162–63; Payne, The Franco Regime, 167.


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itarianism practiced by the Third Reich was too anti-Christian. In 1939– 1940 the Jesuits’ Razón y Fe and other Catholic papers denounced Nazi racism and anti-Semitism as unchristian, un-Spanish, and un-Catholic, calling on Spain to stay out of the madness sweeping across Europe. The church began to denounce “paganism” and “state worship,” in somewhat vague terms, but even without being named, the Nazis were the obvious targets of such criticism.47 Another area of tension with the regime was over press freedom for Catholics. Almost as soon as the civil war ended, tensions arose between the Falange and the Catholic hierarchy over the press. Church leaders wanted to publish the newspaper El Debate, which had been the daily Catholic flagship even before the years of the Spanish Republic. Citing paper shortages, Serrano Suñer denied the request, even though the newspaper’s staff and plant were intact, having printed a provisional issue on March 28, 1939. The Falange was even difficult on the issue of nonpolitical church publications. In June 1940, Cardinal Gomá, the Spanish primate, formally asked the Falangist Press Delegation, which controlled all publications, permission for Acción Católica to publish a magazine. After four months of delays, on October 31, the Falange agreed to allow the publication, Ecclesia, into print, but only allotted half the newsprint required for minimal distribution. The first edition of Ecclesia went to press in January 1941, but only after the editors promised to consult with the primate over editorials or stories that might cause conflict with the regime. The magazine did well as an official institutional publication, selling most of its forty-peseta annual subscriptions to bishops, priests, Acción Católica lay leaders, and religious institutions, rather than to individuals. After one year of biweekly issues, the popularity of Ecclesia, which had grown to thirty-five hundred subscribers by January 1942, justified the transition to a weekly periodical. By the end of World War II, Ecclesia had fifty-five hundred subscribers, but the readership was much larger, as an issue sent to a church or religious institution could have dozens of readers.48 Like all other publications, it was also subject to prior censorship, although the regime ended this control after the end of World War II. The

47. Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España: La Revista Ecclesia entre 1941 y 1945, 115; Ecclesia, August 22, 1942; Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 129–35, 156–57. 48. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy, 101, 163; Redondo, Historia de la Iglesia en España, vol. 2, 602; Schulte, The Spanish Press, 235; Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 19, 20, 35, 39, 40, 62–63; Ecclesia, January 1, 1941, July 4, 1942.


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Falange only banned the distribution of one issue, that of January 6, 1945, because it contained mildly pro-democratic ideas in some of the editorials, taking up Pius XII’s reformist proposals. Because of these limitations, Ecclesia rarely commented on domestic politics or international events, except when they had a direct impact on the church’s ability to promote the faith. An example of this was during the spring of 1944, when the magazine called for the protection of Rome and the Vatican from Allied bombing, a suggestion that showed the church’s concern for the pope but also angered the Allies, who considered the Eternal City as a legitimate target, given its occupation and military use by Germany. In its editorials, with a few exceptions such as these, the publication maintained a position of “strict neutrality,” supporting the efforts of Pope Pius XII to mediate a peaceful end to the conflict. From January 1941 to April 1942, Ecclesia included news of the war, including an “international chronicle” of major developments, written with a slight pro-Allied prejudice. The news review ended, however, with the increasing delicacy of the Spanish government’s position in the conflict and because of tensions with the Falange over the coverage. Some of these came out in dueling viewpoints between Ecclesia and some Falangist newspapers, with editorials in each criticizing the other in vague terms.49 Ecclesia made clear its opposition to Nazism. After it began publication in January 1941, Ecclesia criticized Nazi racial doctrine and Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who inspired elements of National Socialist ideology. Ecclesia argued that the German writer was the inspiration for not just neopaganism but also the Spanish Generation of ’98. Complaining of the influence of works such as “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in Catholic countries, the church cautioned the faithful to avoid Nietzsche and other dangerous thinkers. Still, this anti-Nazi sentiment was based more on defending the prerogatives of the church than on ideological grounds. While perhaps the church was uncomfortable with the most vitriolic brand of antiSemitism emanating from Germany, Ecclesia did defend the 1492 expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella. The magazine argued that despite some unpleasant side effects, including reductions in commerce and the vibrancy of Spanish culture, it was nonetheless a good decision, as this action spared Spain the problems Jews brought—“the ferment so 49. Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 65, 163; Ecclesia, January 15, February 1, 1941, April 22, 1944, January 27, 1945; Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 47, 56–57, 94, 141–45.


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many times of national decomposition, of which Spain was saved, thanks to the referred decree.”50 Along with these mild criticisms of Nazism came enthusiastic support for the anticommunism of the Third Reich, especially after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. After the dispatch of the Blue Division to fight on the Eastern Front, Ecclesia expressed the hope that the unit’s volunteers would “evangelize a defeated Russia.” In summer 1941, Catholic leaders were ready to embrace the idea of a “European Crusade against communism.” As an indication of the ambivalence in the church toward Nazism, the words “Hitler,” “Nazi,” and even “Germany” rarely made an appearance in articles about the Blue Division. Singled out for particular support were the four hundred youth of Acción Católica, almost half of them from Madrid, who enlisted in the division.51 The church tried to emphasize the Catholicism within the unit, highlighting the work of the twenty-two Spanish chaplains who accompanied the volunteers to the Eastern Front. These priests offered Mass every day, no matter the battlefield conditions, and on the way to Russia even shared religious services in Vilnius with Polish Catholics. Another example of intense Catholicism among Blue Division soldiers was the pledge of 340,000 pesetas by returning veterans for the reconstruction of a monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Cerro de los Angeles. This, along with tributes to fallen AC members, downplayed the fact that the unit was defending the anti-Christian Nazi empire.52 In addition to the Blue Division, other forms of collaboration with the Third Reich were acceptable to the church. For example, the church praised Spain’s participation in the Nazi-sponsored Congress of European Youth, held in Vienna in the summer of 1942, especially the Spanish delegation’s successful efforts to pass resolutions supporting the traditional family and faith in God. The Hitler Youth did not welcome the addition of these ideas as basic elements of common belief between the gathered youth organizations of the New Order, but given the support to Spanish proposals by Hungarian, Finnish, and Dutch representatives, the Germans had to yield the point. The Nazi leadership had hoped for anti-Jewish

50. Ecclesia, February 13, March 6, 1943; Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 89. 51. Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 69–72; Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 174–75; Ecclesia, July 15, August 1, 1941. 52. Ecclesia, February 14, 1941, March 21, 1942, September 4, 1943.


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declarations and distancing from traditional religion, but did not succeed in this endeavor. The Spanish Church also saw the youth conference’s creation of a commission on “Youth and the Family,” as well as the scheduling of the 1943 event in Madrid, as victories for the “Catholic spirit of Spain” at the gathering.53 More conflict between the regime and the church arose over the question of investiture. In 1939, at the close of the civil war, twenty-eight bishoprics remained vacant, unfilled because of disagreements between Franco and the church hierarchy. The regime was insistent that those holding bishoprics had to be loyal Nationalists, without any hint of leftist, Republican, or separatist sentiments. The Vatican wanted autonomy to shape the church as it saw fit, without political interference. Some leaders in Rome also feared the appointment of Falangist or even pro-Nazi bishops, who might serve as apologists for totalitarianism in Spain.54 Franco wanted to renew the practice established by the Concordat of 1851, by which the state and church shared responsibility for naming leaders, while Rome wanted complete independence in this matter. The impasse lasted throughout the civil war and for two years after its end. By the beginning of 1941 there were still twenty empty bishoprics, caused by deaths and retirements. Finally, in June 1941 the Spanish state and the Vatican agreed to a complicated formula to resolve the investiture question. For each vacancy, Franco would forward six nominations to the Holy See, which would narrow the list to three, from which the Spanish dictator would choose one, who would become the bishop after confirmation by the pope. Newly appointed bishops also had to swear allegiance to the Franco regime. Foreign Minister Serrano Suñer and the Papal Nuncio, Gaetano Cicognani, signed the final agreement on June 7, 1941, and agreed to work toward a Concordat.55 The new system began operating in 1941, with the first bishops appointed in 1942, and endured in some form until the final Concordat of 1953. The issue died away as a point of conflict, despite some initial friction during the first two years of the system when Serrano Suñer attempted to appoint Falangist priests to vacant positions. Appointments followed quickly 53. Ibid., October 10, 1942; Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España, 96; La Iglesia en España, 60; Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall, 131. 54. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 373–76; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain’”; Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 47; La Iglesia en España, 52. 55. Arriba, June 8, 1941.


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after the agreement, and by the end of the war new bishops filled almost all of the vacancies.56 The most serious vacancy was that of the archbishopric of Toledo, the primate of Spain, empty since the death of Cardinal Gomá on August 22, 1940. With no firm leadership during this critical period, the church was unable to form a united policy in regard to World War II from Gomá’s passing until fall 1941. Consequently, during this key period of collaboration with the Axis, “the immediate influence of the ‘Catholic family’ in the give-and-take of internal political struggles was minimal.” While all Franco regime ministers were practicing Catholics, only one, José Ibañez Martín, minister of education from 1939 to 1951, was a member of Acción Católica and an active advocate of church interests in the government.57 Finally, in October 1941, the regime and the Vatican agreed to the appointment of a new primate, Dr. Enrique Pla y Deniel, a Catalan who had supported the Nationalist uprising. Pla y Deniel was pro-Franco, or he would not have been nominated, but was also a very strong advocate for the rights of the church. While he did not cause Franco as many difficulties as Cardinal Segura had, Pla was very insistent on the privileges of the church. For example, in 1945 a proposed school law would have weakened the role of the church in education. Pla forced Franco to back down after threatening to go public with his protest. At the end of the war, Pla also supported general amnesty for nonviolent political prisoners, the end of censorship, and the right of association.58 The church during World War II had more problems than empty bishoprics, however. Catholic leaders despaired at the ignorance and irreligiousness of most Spaniards after years of anticlericalism, economic distress, and war. Among the greatest problems highlighted by the church were the abject poverty, misery, and lack of spirituality in the suburbs of Madrid, Barcelona, and other large cities. Not only was housing insufficient and quality of life poor but also there were almost no churches or priests in many of these areas. In the poorest neighborhoods in Madrid, more than three hundred thousand residents had almost no religious assistance, churches, or priests. More than 70 percent of school-age children in the suburbs lacked schools, and 80 percent of couples asking

56. Ecclesia, July 1, 1941; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 387–88, 408–10; Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 44, 48–49. 57. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 392–93; Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 37. 58. Ecclesia, November 15, 1941; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 389, 401–2.


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to be married were unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer or make the sign of the cross. More than 70 percent of residents had never had their first communion, and 90 percent of the population did not regularly attend Mass.59 Even before the civil war, deaths and retirements had significantly reduced the number of priests, with two thousand parishes without an assigned father. These numbers, which reflected an almost 50 percent decline in the number of priests from 1926 to 1935, increased geometrically with the thousands of religious leaders killed during the conflict. To add to these casualties, the civil war ended the lives of another 20 percent of the nation’s clergy—a second major reduction in the priesthood in just over a dozen years.60 Ecclesia described the postwar spiritual condition of many suburbs as one of “dechristianization.”61 In the barrio of Puente de Vallecas in 1941, one priest had responsibility for ninety thousand residents, and more than ten thousand children had never been baptized—68 percent of the children born in the district. Of marriages performed in Puente de Vallecas in 1939–1940, 80 percent of the couples could not perform the sign of the cross properly, 76 percent did not know the Lord’s Prayer, and 92 percent could not recite the Apostle’s creed. Less than 12 percent of adults received last rites, and only 6.1 percent of the population attended Easter services. In the Madrid neighborhood of Chamartín, 75 percent died in 1940 without receiving last rites, and only 16.6 percent attended Easter services. In this same district, by the end of 1941 only 11 percent died without last rites and 41 percent attended Easter services, dramatic improvements in both categories. The diocese in the capital made a major effort to reach out to working-class districts, building seventeen new parishes in the suburbs of Madrid within the first two postwar years.62 These problems were not confined to Madrid and other major cities. An example of the struggles of a small parish was the community of Peña Grande, a district of three thousand near Fuencarral in the foothills of the Sierras. The parish, San Rafael, met in a tiny former food store, with a sanctuary nine by six meters, with a three-meter ceiling. The baptismal font was a simple washbasin, an improvement over the plate it replaced. 59. Ecclesia, July 18, 1942. 60. Ibid., January 1, 1941, March 20, 1943; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’” 61. Ecclesia, April 15, 1941. 62. Ibid., April 15, 1941, January 31, 1942; Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 52–53; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s ‘New Spain.’”


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Even in the winter, the three doors to the small sanctuary had to be left open during Mass, because regular attendance of 150 filled the place to the rafters. On Christmas 1942, more than five hundred people —80 percent of them women and children—came to hear Mass, spilling well out into the street. Father Pablo Serrano, the parish priest, delivered a Christmas homily on the poverty of Christ, and His love for the least fortunate, with the theme: “The road of poverty and suffering is the shortest to reach salvation.” The sermon was entirely appropriate, as Serrano’s parishioners lived in abject poverty, with one family of twelve sharing one small room. The church gave away clothing, food, and money to the neediest families, but they were always short of everything, in a place where even the gift of an orange was a treasure.63 San Rafael was not unique, as eleven other parishes in the suburbs of Madrid also lacked church buildings, being forced to meet in private homes or other provisional locations. To remedy this situation, during the first Sunday of every month beginning in 1942 there was a special collection in the diocese of Madrid to restore destroyed churches and build new ones. The bishop of Madrid, Leopoldo Eijo Garay, hoped the diocese would be able to build one or two new parish churches every year from this fund.64 Faced with these difficulties, the church began a major campaign to rechristianize Spain, particularly the zones that had been under the Republicans during the civil war. Priests made every effort to evangelize, increasing the number of baptisms, first communions, marriages, and last rites, and encouraging attendance at Mass and other religious events. The measures experienced modest success, such as in the city of Mataró, where the percentage of dying who received last rites rose from 32 percent in 1940 to 58 percent in 1945. In the suburbs of Madrid at the end of 1939, there were only twelve priests, but this number had increased to sixty-one by the end of 1941. Still, there was much work to be done, especially with men; in some cities, only 3 percent of the adult male population regularly attended religious services. Large sections of the population remained resolutely anticlerical, unfavorably associating the church with the regime, and disappointed in the church’s minimal efforts to solve the social problems of postwar Spain.65

63. Ecclesia, January 2, 1943. 64. YA, January 15, 1942. 65. Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 55–56; La Iglesia en España, 37–38; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 469; Callahan, “The Evangelization of Franco’s


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These efforts to rechristianize Spain did not include allowing nonCatholic churches to prosper. At most, there were twenty thousand Protestants in Spain during the Second World War. One of the few Protestant churches tolerated in Madrid was the Anglican Church of St. George, the official congregation of the British colony in Spain. It was in this small church, on a side street in the prosperous Salamanca district, where English-speaking services met the needs of the foreign Protestants, mostly diplomats, businessmen, and journalists. St. George’s, for example, held a memorial service for Franklin Roosevelt on April 14, 1945.66 The five thousand religious buildings destroyed by the Republic and during the civil war took time and resources to restore. Even as late as 1942, more than four hundred towns still did not have permanent parish churches, and Madrid alone needed more than a dozen new churches to cope with the massive population of the capital. The archbishopric of Toledo, seat of the Spanish primate, had almost 150 vacant parishes with a combined population of more than one hundred thousand. In the diocese of Logroño, every year between ten and fifteen priests retired or died, even in peacetime, but the diocesan seminary only trained six new priests per year, leaving a deficit after twelve years of almost one hundred. The situation was just as difficult in Ávila in 1943, the city of St. Teresa, where clergy numbers declined at a rapid rate. In fifty years the number of priests had fallen by 50 percent, and since 1933 only 37 seminarians graduated to replace the 128 who died or retired, and one-third of the active diocesan fathers were over the age of sixty.67 Another area that the church saw as fertile ground for reviving Catholicism was among the Spanish exiles in France. This was a significant challenge, as many refugees believed that the civil war was “the fault of the church” and had “turned their backs” on the faith, even preventing their children from attending Mass. Compounding the problem was the shortage of Spanish-speaking priests in France, where fifteen chaplains attempted to minister to more than forty thousand exiles and their families. The church held great sympathy for Republican exiles, expressing a desire for

‘New Spain’”; Ecclesia, December 15, 1941, November 28, 1942; U.S. Military History Institute, Office of Strategic Services, Donovan Papers, Report, March 12, 1942, “Current Attitudes in Spain.” 66. Hermet, Los Católicos en la España Franquista, 107; Helen Hynes Hill, Winnebago Bred, 88–89. 67. Ecclesia, July 15, 1941, January 24, April 18, 1942, January 30, March 13, 1943.


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their reintegration in the Spanish nation: “we are sure we agree with the highest national authorities, that the Spanish refugees should be in condition to receive the most generous pardon possible, the greatest indulgence that the law will allow, without erasing the guilt of those who have it.” With the permission of Nazi and Vichy authorities, Spanish-speaking priests in France published El Trabajador Español (The Spanish Worker) for the refugee population, estimated to include three thousand in concentration camps, thirteen hundred under police supervision, and thirtyfive thousand in regimented labor battalions, numbers that did not include family members. Thousands more Spaniards lived illegally, underground, or as integrated elements of the French population, intermarried or otherwise blended into the native population.68 In the final two years of World War II, Franco attempted to improve relations with the church, strained as they were by the investiture struggle and conflicts with the Falange. He gave Catholic priests the final word on film censorship, allowing them to veto movies they believed to be injurious to Spanish morals or the church. All review boards had to have at least one priest, who could deny the release of pictures lacking in “a true, objective, patriotic and Christian view of life.” In the last year of the war, Franco also removed many press restrictions and censors from Catholic newspapers, magazines, and other publications, leaving Ecclesia to print whatever the church wanted.69 In 1943 and 1944, Francoist officials sent instructions to the press ordering that their writers should describe Spain as “unitary” and “Catholic,” but not as “totalitarian,” a word coming into increasing disfavor with the waning of the Axis. With the end of the war, the regime determined that its only hope of diplomatic salvation, without seriously transforming itself, was in embracing the only institution within Francoism that had an international appeal: the Catholic Church. By appealing to other states with large Catholic populations, such as those of Latin America and Western Europe, Spain hoped to break out of the international isolation that began during the latter years of the Second World War. This effort to dismantle the fascist elements in the regime involved not just public posturing but also major shakeups in the composition and official ideology of the regime. At a time of financial difficulties, Franco’s government also maintained or 68. Ibid., November 20, 27, December 4, 1943. 69. Ibid., January 9, 1943; Gallego and Pazos, La Iglesia en la España Contemporánea, 68; Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 59–60.


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increased funding for the church, while allowing the military and other parts of the government to languish in significant penury.70 After the war, the regime increasingly relied on Catholicism as the strongest bulwark of the regime, giving additional resources to rebuild destroyed places of worship and to pay the rising expenses of religious institutions. As a result, by 1950 the church had recovered from most of the physical damage of the civil war. The government also encouraged Catholics to take a more active role in the state, appointing many affiliated with lay church organizations to higher posts, often replacing members of the newly discredited Falange. While every one of Franco’s cabinet ministers, from the civil war to the end of the regime, was officially a Catholic, the numbers of those affiliated with lay Catholic organizations or with strong ties to the ecclesiastical hierarchy increased during this period.71 In another gesture to the church, Franco transferred control over censorship from the Falange, where it had resided since the civil war, to the Ministry of National Education, a position traditionally held by committed Catholics. A new Law of Primary Education also gave increased power to the Catholic Church in all primary schools, whether religious, public, or private. This new law granted the church the right to inspect and pass judgment on curricula in all educational institutions, empowering the Catholic orders and institutions in a way no other Western state previously had done. As the education minister was José Ibáñez Martín (1939–1951), a member of the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas and a close collaborator with Opus Dei, the efforts to strengthen his department were clearly intended to increase the apparent Catholicism of the regime.72 The most prominent of these appointments was Foreign Minister Alberto Martín Artajo, president of Acción Católica, who joined the government as foreign minister on July 18, 1945, the ninth anniversary of the Nationalist uprising. Martín, one of the most important lay Catholic leaders, also ran the publishing house Editorial Católica and had proven his loyalty in May by serving as Franco’s emissary to the Bourbon Pretender, Don Juan. His mission was to make clear to the king-in-waiting that the first loyalty of Spanish Catholics was to Franco, and not to an immediate restoration of the monarchy. This was even more significant, as Martín

70. Lazo, La Iglesia, la Falange y el Fascismo, 307–8; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 399, 468; Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, 401–2. 71. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 400–402; Payne, The Franco Regime, 349. 72. De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 305; Payne, The Franco Regime, 350; Amando de Miguel, Sociología del Franquismo, 206–8.


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Artajo had long been a fervent monarchist and retained this sentiment despite his mission to Don Juan. As foreign minister, the Catholic leader had the challenge of presenting the Franco regime as ultra-Catholic, anticommunist, and more ideologically aligned with the Christian Democratic movement than with its former friends, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Significantly, in this new government the post of general secretary of the Falange remained vacant, a portent of the changing times. José Luis de Arrese, who had held this position since 1941, left the cabinet and was not replaced. Even the name of the party changed, to the vague term “Movimiento,” another attempt to make the regime seem less threatening.73 From being the essential ingredient to Franco’s victory during the Spanish Civil War, the Catholic Church had become by 1945 once again indispensable. The Spanish regime’s identification with Catholicism was vital to its hopes of regaining international legitimacy. Indeed, Spain’s official embrace of the Catholic Church proved an important tool in Francoist foreign policy, as the nations that were most ardent in their support for a normalization of Spain’s diplomatic status were, with a few exceptions, also those with the largest Catholic populations. The role of the Catholic Church in Spain during World War II could scarcely have been more important. From being one of the pillars of the Nationalist uprising, to the key underpinning of the regime’s cosmetic transformation in 1945, the Spanish Church embodied Francoism. This embrace was not without conflict, however, as the church’s opposition to the Naziphile Falange and the New Order in Europe proved prophetic. By the end of the war, the church emerged as a dominant participant in the Francoist system, while the Falange faded away, an embarrassing reminder of Franco’s flirtation with the Axis powers.

73. Ecclesia, July 28, 1945; Payne, The Franco Regime, 350; Payne, Falange, 240; Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 403–6; Preston, Franco, 533–34; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 304–5; Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 40–42.


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Chapter 8 The Authoritarian State and the Opposition

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he Franco regime understood that although it enjoyed significant support from Catholics, the military, the middle and upper classes, monarchists, and Falangists, not every Spaniard was an enthusiastic subject of the state. To cope with the persistence of opposition, the Spanish government during the civil war and World War II developed sophisticated police, security, and intelligence services to keep watch on potentially rebellious groups, ethnicities, and regions. Most of Spain had not initially rallied to the Nationalist uprising, instead supporting the Republic or remaining neutral, and there was no reason to suspect that these loyalties would transform overnight with Franco’s victory in 1939. Even though by the end of the civil war support for the Nationalists had increased, Franco’s government continued to face opposition from the remnants of the Republican forces. Until the end of the regime in 1975, Spain remained a bitterly divided nation, with the victorious Nationalists ruling coercively over those who had defended the Republic during the civil war. To punish those who had enthusiastically supported the Republic before 1939, and to crush the spirit and capabilities of the working classes and other Republican bases, the state decreed new repressive measures, including some ex post facto decrees. The urban working classes, miners, and rural proletariat, especially in the poor South and in the cities of the industrialized North, saw the regime in a significantly unfavorable light and did not reconcile to it during the Second World War. For many Republi228


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cans, the first few years of the regime were much worse than their suffering during the civil war, as the regime did everything in its power to destroy any potential resistance from Republican forces. Repression after the civil war had as its goal preventing the reemergence of republicanism or workers’ movements, not just in the immediate present but also in the future.1 At the same time, most of the prewar pro-Republican parties and organizations attempted to preserve their structures and programs underground. Anarchists, Socialists, and Communists tried to maintain their existence, despite the harsh repression and extensive security apparatus created by the Franco regime. In the face of intense investigation and prosecution, most of these groups had a viable existence only in exile. Among the two principal ethnic minorities, Basques and Catalans, there were also continuing regionalist sentiments, despite the centralizing efforts of the Nationalist state, which banned languages other than Castellano Spanish and stripped the regions of their legal autonomy. As with the political movements, it was only in other countries that separatists, especially the Basques, maintained an active and public political life. In Spain, law enforcement and repression were effective deterrents to significant open opposition. Another important factor was the sheer exhaustion of most Spaniards after almost three years of fighting as well as the five unstable years of the Second Republic before the Nationalist uprising. The Franco regime was very effective in using its police, intelligence agencies, Falange, and military to crush internal dissent. At the center of the effort was the Dirección General de Seguridad—DGS (General Office of Security), an institution originally created in the late nineteenth century and important during the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923–1929) and in the Second Republic (1931–1939). Supervising police and intelligence work throughout Spain, its agents and informers played an indispensable role in monitoring and repressing opponents of the regime. The DGS was subordinate to the Interior Ministry, and had its official revival in Nationalist Spain on August 25, 1939.2 One of the most important tasks of the DGS was the preparation of reports for Franco and his cabinet ministers about the national mood. These periodic documents, prepared approximately every two weeks, included detailed information about internal and external opposition groups, public opinion, crime, the economic situation, public reaction to international events, and the activities of foreigners and diplomats in Spain. The 1. Carlos Elordi, ed., Los Años Difíciles, 265; Santos Juliá, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, 277. 2. Antón, Historia de la Policía Española, 23, 353.


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DGS took seriously the problem of dissent and opposition, cataloging the actions of groups it considered hostile to or unreconciled to the regime. Listed as potential threats were Traditionalists (Carlists), dissident monarchists, radical Falangists, Basques, Communists, political prisoners, parties of the Popular Front, Freemasons, Socorro Rojo (Red Aid), and family members of Communists and fugitives. The DGS had many worries about these groups and passed these concerns along to Franco and his advisers.3 Another important law enforcement agency assisting the DGS was the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), an institution created in the nineteenth century as a national police force. Trained in the cause of monarchism and nationalism, and conservative throughout its ranks, the Guardia Civil corps of officers had almost to a man supported the Nationalist uprising. Consequently, except for a tiny element, it ceased to function in the Republican zone and became immediately identified with the Franco regime. As a reward for its loyalty, in March 1940 the Guardia Civil absorbed the Carabineros, a rural police force, and was also given the honor of providing five soldiers and one noncommissioned officer on a permanent basis to form part of Franco’s bodyguard force, along with Moors from the Spanish Army of Morocco.4 The challenge for the Spanish police, DGS, and security apparatus was daunting. For example, unlike in the Soviet Union, there were no significant movement restrictions in Nationalist Spain, as long as travelers had proper identification and stayed away from border regions.5 While initially Spaniards needed passes from their local mayor or civil governor, this requirement never applied to employees of the government or Falange, and even a membership card in the Falange or one of its auxiliaries was sufficient identification. Large numbers of the population had enthusiastically supported the Republican government and retained resentment toward the representatives of the new authoritarian state. Spain had also historically been a state with rather weak law enforcement, with lower percentages of police than any other major Western European state. Despite its reputation as a police state, during the Second World War Spain remained relatively unpoliced, with only seven thousand agents and officers in all

3. “Report of the DGS about the National Situation,” January 31, 1943, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 67–94. 4. José María Bueno Carrera, La Guardia Civil: Su Historia, Organización y sus Uniformes, 24, 102, 104, 106. 5. Abella, La Vida Cotidiana en España Bajo el Regimen de Franco, 46.


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branches of the DGS, excluding local police and the sixty-thousand-strong Guardia Civil.6 To cope with the problems of crime, the black market, and political opposition, the DGS reorganized itself in October 1939. The new form of the agency had four sections: General Commissariat of Frontiers (frontiers, passports, airports, and harbors), General Commissariat of Information (counterintelligence and investigations of Marxists and Masons), General Commissariat of Public Order (prisoners, illegal weapons and explosives, public order) and General Commissariat for Information (international crime and identity documents). There were also separate units within the DGS for the Guardia Civil, national police, and traditional criminal investigation. Another important innovation that aided policing was the Documento Nacional de Identidad (National Identity Document), created in 1944, which eventually became a photographic identification card. Every citizen over the age of sixteen had to carry this card with them at all times, and failure to do so could result in immediate arrest.7 One of the reasons why Spain could operate with such a small police force, at least in comparison to other Western European states, was that the police was not on its own. Under Franco, there was a blurring of lines between the police and the military. Army officers could hold command and executive positions within the Policía Nacional and the Interior Ministry, as well as in other government offices. Additionally, the Guardia Civil, already paramilitary in organization and training, became even more militarized, with its own armored vehicles and automatic weapons. Underscoring the militarization of the institution was its educational program. The textbooks and courses taken by Guardia Civil cadets were almost the same as Franco had administered when he had been commander of the army’s military academy in Zaragoza during the monarchy.8 The army and Falangist militia were always available as backup forces when the police or Guardia Civil proved unable to cope with a criminal or political threat; they had formal cooperative agreements in place. For all of this, the police and security forces had a decreasing share of the national budget, declining from 10.5 percent in 1940 to 6.4 percent in 6. José Caamaño Bournacell, La Policía a Tráves del Tiempo (1908–1958), 189, 193, 208, 245–46; Payne, The Franco Regime, 245; YA, July 5, August 27, 1939. 7. Caamaño Bournacell, La Policía a Tráves del Tiempo, 203, 206; Antón, Historia de la Policía Española, 62, 394; Arriba, September 26, 1939, March 21, 1944. 8. Diego López Garrido, El Aparato Policial en España, 63, 157; José Antonio Olmeda Gómez, Las Fuerzas Armadas en el Estado Franquista, 110–12.


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1945.9 Neither in funding nor in personnel did these agencies have sufficient assets to create a totalitarian police state without the active collaboration of Falangists and other supporters of the regime, serving as informers, auxiliaries, and allies in the war on subversion. The DGS itself was very militarized, and typically operated under the direction of military officers in the Ministry of Interior. While the first director, José Finat, the count of Mayalde, was an active Falangist before and after his tenure from 1939 to 1941, his successors were military officers. Finat was a close collaborator with Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, shared intelligence with him, and was the sponsor of the German’s visit to Spain in October 1940. The extent of Spanish police cooperation with Nazi security forces remains unknown, but Finat and Himmler did have good professional relations. In fact, Finat left his office as director to become ambassador to Germany. The two men who followed Finat as DGS directors, Gerardo Caballero Olabezar (1941–1942) and Francisco Rodríguez Martínez (1942–1945), were active-duty lieutenant colonels in the Spanish Army.10 In addition to the military, the DGS could also force the cooperation of average Spanish citizens as informers. For example, landlords and hotel managers had to submit lists of foreign renters and guests. Even doormen had to report the movements of foreign nationals to the DGS. Foreigners living in Spain were required to register with their local police, forming lists the DGS could check for accuracy. Other government employees or party members considered auxiliaries of the national police, and available for security duties, were Falangist militiamen, municipal police, forest rangers, municipal security guards, railroad employees (RENFE and private), employees of entertainment venues, doormen, and private rural security guards.11 Within the Falange, the National Delegation for Information and Investigation also aided the authoritarian police state. Its headquarters was collocated with the DGS, and it provided major support to the agency and other police and security officials. The first director of the DGS, Finat, was also the leader of the delegation, although after the end of his tenure these offices were split. As the primary custodian of personnel records for the Falange, prospective members, and even some opponents of the regime, the agency could investigate and expel party members for political, moral,

9. Antón, Historia de la Policía Española, 363–64, 382; Payne, The Franco Regime, 246. 10. Pastor Petit, Espionaje: La Segunda Guerra Mundial y España, 542–43; Payne, The Franco Regime, 272–73; Arriba, October 20, 22, 23, 1940, July 15, 1941. 11. YA, October 7, 24, 1939, March 7, 1942.


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and financial unreliability. While it primarily worked on the internal affairs of the Falange, its files and archives were voluminous, containing details about the personal and political lives of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards.12 The Falange in general also played a role in the security apparatus. In every province, and in many neighborhoods, members of the party acted as informers, reporting on suspicious or subversive acts by their fellow citizens. Some towns even had Falangist informants at the level of each block or apartment building, although this system did not always work effectively. When the rare strikes or work stoppages arose, the Falange was prepared with reports on labor activists and agitators, some of whom received the death penalty based on this information. These informers added eyes and ears to the thinly stretched agents of the DGS and police.13 Fear was also an important ally of internal security. For example, at the end of the civil war, the Nationalist regime ordered all Republican soldiers and militia members to turn themselves in to the nearest detention facility or concentration camp. The penalty for ignoring this directive was the promise of prosecution for “support for the rebellion,” the charge Francoists leveled against anyone who had defended the Republic before or during the civil war. Given that the penalty for this crime was often execution by firing squad, it is no surprise that as many as four hundred thousand Republican soldiers voluntarily surrendered following the publication of this announcement, swelling the numbers of prisoners at internment centers.14 The government continued to use fear of a renewed civil war as a powerful inducement to gain support. Newspapers ran stories of secret Communist plots to seize power, asserting that only the strength of Franco could prevent these plans. Among the actions allegedly planned by these dissidents was the arrest of all members of the military, confiscation of all assets of the church as an indemnity, the absolute separation of church and state, and revolutionary tribunals for all those who had supported the Nationalists or the Franco regime. While these plans may have given hope to some former Republicans, their publication must have terrified those likely to be victims of its implementation.15 International demands on Spain for regime change, as well as overt support for exile groups, actually seemed to have helped Franco. This

12. 13. 14. 15.

Chueca, El Fascismo en los Comienzos del Régimen de Franco, 247–49. Ellwood, Franco, 110–11; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 62–63. Payne, The Franco Regime, 222; Arriba, April 1, 1939. Arriba, February 11, 1944.


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external pressure allowed Franco to portray himself as the principal defender of Spanish sovereignty, against groups of exiles compromised by dependence on the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States, and the United Nations. Spanish nationalism remained a potent force during the Second World War and in the years that followed, and also tremendously diminished the support levels for the maquis guerrilla units that began infiltrating into Spain in 1944 and 1945.16 Separatists and opposition groups on the Left were diverse, in conflict with each other, and forced to rely on external bases of support in their confrontations with the regime, a dependence that undermined their support among the Spanish population. Even as early as the Spanish Civil War, Republican leaders believed that their fate was tied to that of the Allies. Realizing that war between Germany and the Western Powers was inevitable, Spanish Popular Front politicians hoped that it would come soon enough to save their government. While the end of the civil war did come five months before the beginning of the Second World War, once the second conflict began Republicans in exile once again identified the Allied cause as their own, hoping to return to Spain with the help of the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Spanish exiles, especially in France, were the most consistent and challenging opposition to the regime. Even after the German occupation of most of France in 1940, and of the remainder in 1942, the Franco regime looked north with some concern. The often bitter fighting between the various exile groups, reported on with some glee by the Spanish press, lessened its concern. The conflicts within the exile community between separatists and those who believed in a strong central state, and between those who favored socialism and those who wanted a return to capitalism, severely undermined the effectiveness of the émigrés’ political organizations. In addition, aiding Franco was the ambivalence of General Charles DeGaulle, who restricted the activities of exile groups in his Free French movement and banned exile newspapers once he took control of France.17 Women were among the exiles as well. Under the Second Republic and in the Republican zone during the civil war, women had an unprecedented increase in personal freedom and liberties. The Constitution of 1931 granted the vote, citizenship, equal parenting rights, and legal independence to women, who prior to these reforms had been legally subordinate to their husbands or fathers. Women also had gained new educational 16. Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 191. 17. Arriba, January 18, 21, March 22, 1945.


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opportunities at every level, including at independent institutions such as the Protestant Instituto Internacional in Madrid that promoted advanced studies by women. Republican women who had fled Spain with the victory of the Nationalists faced difficult challenges in exile. In the concentration camps in France, which held Spanish Republicans, many women had little choice but to engage in prostitution with the guards and officials to feed themselves and their families. Spanish women who saw themselves as more than “passive, born to sacrifice and to be activists only as guardians of the moral,” had few choices in 1939 other than exile.18 Anti-Francoist women who remained in Spain and chose to avoid membership in the Sección Femenina or Catholic groups had no officially permitted organizations. Along with the leftist and democratic parties of the Second Republic, the repressive laws of the Nationalist state banned the whole range of women’s auxiliaries, study circles, and other Republican and feminist associations. In response, some formed underground groups to oppose the regime and to assist the Communist-led guerrillas who began operating on Spanish territory at the end of the Second World War.19 The women who opposed Franco’s government and Pilar Primo de Rivera’s vision for their futures—and there were many—lived for the most part outside of the SF, and their stories form an essential part of the resistance that simmered from the end of the civil war to the end of the regime itself. One of the greatest challenges for the Spanish exiles was their lack of unity. The last president and parliamentary chief, Manuel Azaña and Diego Martínez Barrio, had resigned their offices even before the fall of the Republic. This vacuum left Republican émigrés without a clear constitutional leader in the immediate aftermath of the civil war. While Prime Minister Juan Negrín did not resign, many saw him as hopelessly compromised by his complete identification with the Communists. Another major difficulty was the dispersal of the Republican leadership. Most initially remained in France, but others emigrated to Mexico, the Soviet Union, or other nations or even returned to Spain voluntarily or involuntarily. The Germans also captured or extradited to Spain several important leaders, subsequently executed by Franco, such as Catalan leader Lluís Companys.20 18. Carmen Alcalde, La Mujer en la Guerra Civil Española, 112–13; Carmen de Zulueta, Cien Años de Educacion de la Mujer Española: Historia del Instituto Internacional; Alcalde, Mujeres en el Franquismo, 27–28; Richards, A Time of Silence, 52. 19. Fernanda Romeu Alfaro, El Silencio Voto: Mujeres contra el Franquismo, 39–41, 147, 153. 20. José Borrás, Políticas de los Exiliados Españoles, 1944–1950, 12–13; Arriba, September 12, 1939.


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During the last few months of the civil war, as many as five hundred thousand Spaniards fled from the Nationalist forces into France, French North Africa, and other countries. The largest number, more than a quarter of a million, crossed into France, where the French government interned them, often in conditions of absolute squalor, unsanitary conditions, and shortages of food, water, and medicine. Paris hoped that these conditions would encourage exiles to return to Spain, and in this the government was not disappointed; more than two hundred thousand returned home within the first year, with tens of thousands more crossing the border during the remaining years of the Second World War.21 Only two nations, the Soviet Union and Mexico, were willing to accept thousands of permanent refugees from among the Republican émigrés, but only small numbers were able to accept these sanctuaries. Mexico was the most receptive, and twenty thousand eventually made their way there. In 1940 the Mexican government granted citizenship to any Spanish exile who wanted it, without forcing them to abandon their claims on citizenship in Spain. Because of the costs associated with transatlantic travel, most of the Spaniards who made it to Mexico were professionals, members of the middle classes, or politicians with access to financial resources. Unskilled workers or those without connections or education had almost no opportunity to find refuge in Mexico. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, only accepted children and limited numbers of Communists, for a total of approximately six thousand refugees—two-thirds of them children. The remaining exiles, mostly working-class and those who did not have political connections or financial resources, remained in France under terrible conditions. The French government dispersed more than two hundred thousand refugees across more than two thousand camps and internment facilities in southern and central France, under guard and provided with the most Spartan of conditions.22 With the French declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the French army attempted to recruit for the French Foreign Legion in internment camps, but few Spaniards were interested, preferring to serve in the regular army rather than in what they considered a disreputable 21. Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 69, 77; Louis Stein, Beyond Death and Exile: The Spanish Republicans in France, 1939–1955, 3. 22. Mariano Constante, Los Años Rojos: Holocausto de los Españoles, 47; Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 225; Encarna Nicolás Marín and Alicia Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo (1939–1975), 21–22; David Wingeate Pike, In the Service of Stalin: The Spanish Communists in Exile, 1939–1945, 1–3, 17, 34; Stein, Beyond Death and Exile, 93; Santos Juliá, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, 282–83.


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group of mercenaries. As a result of the lack of interest in the Foreign Legion, the government drafted all able-bodied male Spanish refugees for military construction and other labor. Organized into “march battalions” and “work companies,” these conscripts, numbering approximately one hundred thousand, received the same pay as French soldiers, but not the same liberties, and could not mix with the local population. They were “given work that no French soldier would have accepted,” digging trenches, laying minefields, preparing anti-tank ditches, and improving fortifications.23 The French defeat and the constitution of the rump Vichy state in summer 1940 complicated life for Spanish exiles. The Germans and their Vichy collaborators banned all Spanish émigré groups, allowing only the Mexican government to act on behalf of the exiles. The Nazis captured approximately ten thousand Spaniards who had been serving in march battalions or labor companies. Refusing to grant them prisoner-of-war status, the Germans instead sent them to concentration camps as political prisoners. Most went to Mauthausen, the only major concentration camp that the International Committee of the Red Cross was never able to visit, where they endured horrible conditions. Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen were forced to wear a blue triangle patch, with an “S” sewn to them, to indicate their origins. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Spanish Communists organized a clandestine organization in the camp, later expanded to include inmates of other nationalities. Unable to form an open opposition during the war, on May 5, 1945, the inmates attacked the camp guards and occupied the grounds before Allied forces arrived. Of the initial ten thousand Spaniards, only two thousand survived the war and the camp’s liberation in 1945.24 Within France, the Germans conscripted forty thousand Spanish exiles into forced labor, including approximately twenty-five thousand used for military construction in the Organization Todt, a construction force named for Nazi Minister for Armaments Fritz Todt, even after the Nazi leader’s death in 1942. Organization Todt, under Todt and his successor, the architect Albert Speer, employed most of the Spanish conscripts on the beaches of northwestern France, where they helped build the defenses for Fortress 23. Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 104; Pike, In the Service of Stalin, 4; Constante, Los Años Rojos, 55, 57, 58. 24. Nicolás Marín and Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo, 25; Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 110, 155; Constante, Los Años Rojos, 103, 107, 128–29, 154, 181–83; Pike, In the Service of Stalin, 74–83, 108–48; David Wingeate Pike, Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, the Horror on the Danube.


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Europe. During the first two years of German occupation, while Vichy France retained its semi-independent status, an additional seven thousand Spaniards were able to leave for Mexico, until Vichy severed relations with Mexico in December 1942. This left the remaining one hundred thousand émigrés in Nazi-occupied France in a difficult condition, and tens of thousands joined the French Resistance to avoid being sent to labor in Germany.25 Those who were unable to leave were subject to labor conscription by the Vichy government, who sent thousands to Germany in place of French citizens.26 Vichy leader Pierre Laval offered Spanish refugees the option of returning to Spain to face possible arrest for rebellion, or deportation as forced laborers to Nazi Germany. Given that the Nazis were promising to exchange one French prisoner-of-war for every civilian worker that Vichy provided, it is no surprise that Laval preferred to send foreign nationals in place of his fellow French citizens. Conditions for Spanish exiles were so difficult in France that the Franco regime, not usually concerned with the fate of its enemies, sent one million francs to help with the humanitarian needs of this community, as well as books and other propaganda materials to reeducate them about the positive achievements of the Nationalist government.27 In May 1944, faced with increased participation in the French Resistance by Spanish exiles, Spain and Germany agreed to classify émigrés into three categories. Those with identification papers dated before February 1, 1944, were to receive full protection by Spanish diplomats in France. Those who had applied for these papers before February 25, 1944, would be considered Spanish citizens, but would not be protected until they received their identification cards. Those who had not applied until after February 25, or who had never applied, would not receive any consular assistance. The most important aid Spanish diplomats could grant was a travel visa back to Spain, something that became increasingly valuable as Allied bombing, German repression, and food shortages began to strike harder in occupied France. Under these circumstances, conditions in Spain, for all of the risks exiles ran by returning, did not seem so unpleasant.28 25. Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 111, 118, 135; Stein, Beyond Death and Exile, 128–29. 26. YA, August 5, 1942. 27. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 14–141; YA, June 21, 1944; Arriba, August 5, 1942. 28. AMAE, LegR2299, Expediente 9, Note, May 30, 1944, German Embassy to Spanish Foreign Ministry.


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With the Allied liberation of France in August 1944, thousands of Spaniards who had participated in the French Resistance turned their attention south, regarding the overthrow of the Franco regime as the logical conclusion to their fight against the Nazis. In the fall of 1944, approximately seven thousand Spanish guerrillas, known as maquis, invaded Spain, expecting to begin a revolution against Franco’s government. Overwhelmingly composed of day laborers and other working-class representatives, they did not have the heavy weapons, technical skill, logistical support, or leadership to confront the security and military forces of a modern state, even one as inefficient as the Franco regime. Faced with indifference from the Spanish population, the insurrection failed abysmally. The maquis were unable to convince local civilians to help them and so had to endure exhaustion and hunger in the midst of fierce counterattacks by the seventy thousand Spanish police, Guardia Civil, and military forces in northern Spain.29 The maquis hoped to carve out a small northern zone of occupation in the Valley of Arán. Their forces infiltrated Spain in late 1944 and early 1945, in groups ranging in size from several dozen to a few hundred. Having created a liberated zone, the insurgents could ask the Allies to extend diplomatic recognition, military assistance, and economic aid. With international backing, the rebels could then foment revolution throughout Spain and overthrow the Franco regime. While this scheme did not prosper, it did have its own logic at the time. After all, the Allies had just liberated France in a somewhat similar way, supporting the French Resistance and DeGaulle’s Free French movement, and aiding underground resistance organizations in other European states. The Atlantic Charter and Tehran summits had also stated the Allies’ desire that every nation should live under a government freely chosen by its people, presumably through elections, which Spain had not held since February 1936. Of course, it was Allied troops, rather than the French Resistance, that had liberated France.30 The Spanish government described the maquis as bandits, however, and succeeded in discouraging local support for the abortive Communist uprising. The imposition of the death penalty for those convicted of helping

29. Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 190–91; Bueno Carrera, La Guardia Civil, 24; Fernanda Romeu Alfaro, “Panorámica Sociopolitical de los Primeros Movimientos Guerrilleros,” 370–71, 374–75; Tusell, Franco, España y la II Guerra Mundial, 609–10. 30. Borrás, Políticas de los Exiliados Españoles, 24–26, 27–28, 32–33.


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the invaders, and collective punishment against villages which sheltered them, were also a strong disincentive against local support for the maquis. The punitive measures taken against the few locales that embraced the guerrillas, such as Santa Cruz de Mayo, were effective warnings against collaboration. Spanish security forces made widespread arrests in Santa Cruz de Mayo, sending men and women to prison or executing them for supporting the rebels. The initial efforts of the maquis were also in northern Spain, where much of the rural peasantry had supported the rebellion in 1936 and were unlikely to support a Communist insurgency. More hospitable terrain for revolutionaries, such as Madrid, Barcelona, and the mines of Asturias, were too distant to give direct support.31 Communist attacks on Spanish targets in 1944 and 1945, even ones associated with the government or Falange, did not win much public support. For example, in February 1945 Communist attackers killed two young Falangists, Martín Mora Bernáldez and David Lara Martínez, as they were working late in the neighborhood offices of the Falange in the Madrid barrio of Cuatro Caminos. The next day, the streets of the capital filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters denouncing the aggression and voicing support for the government. While a good share of these protesters were mobilized by the state, the persistence and vehemence of the demonstrations signaled loathing for a potential renewal of violence, even by those who had previously supported the Republican cause. There may have been little love for Franco among the Spanish population, but there was even less desire for renewed civil war and the suffering that would accompany it. Instead of increasing anti-Franco sentiments, the Communist incursions allowed the Spanish leader to rally wavering monarchists to his cause, silence internal dissent, and act as the nationalistic defender of Spain against outside intervention.32 Sporadic efforts by independent anarchist cells to encourage urban insurrection also did not yield much in the way of results and were actively discouraged by the anarchist leadership in exile. The occasional anarchistinspired attacks on banks, armored cars, and other symbols of capitalism, especially in Barcelona, were a pinprick on the regime but resulted in the extermination of many of the remaining anarchist groups in Catalonia. These efforts also galvanized support for the regime, especially among

31. Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 717–18; Richards, A Time of Silence, 53; Payne, The Franco Regime, 345; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 64. 32. Preston, Franco, 518; YA, February 27–28, March 1, 1945; Payne, The Franco Regime, 345–47; Arriba, February 27–28, 1945.


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Catholics who feared a return to the anarchist-led attacks on churches and religious leaders.33 Insurgents had more success in the mountains of Spain, launching sporadic attacks on towns and other small communities. In one such incident in 1943, a small group of Communists seized control of the village of Charches, in the province of Granada. Taking the high ground around the town as well as the entrances, they held the residents of Charches hostage for several hours. After robbing money from the villagers, the attackers ordered the town’s mayor, Falange chief, and priest to attend a leftist demonstration that included the forced singing of the Communist anthem, the Internationale. Well-armed and prepared, the group was able to elude the Guardia Civil and police sent later to capture them, thus adding to the distress of the pro-Nationalist village.34 This was, however, an isolated incident that likely increased levels of support for the regime among those who feared resurgence of communism. Whatever minor insurgent actions took place in Spain, the broader exile community weakened itself through internal struggle. In addition to the separatist Basque and Catalan groups, beginning in 1943 there were two major émigré organizations: the Junta Suprema de Unión Nacional, led by Spanish Communists in the French Resistance, and the more moderate Junta Española de Liberación, headquartered in Mexico City and by design excluding the Communists. While the Communists put their faith in bringing an uprising to Spain, the Republicans in Mexico hoped the Allies would deliver Franco and the Spanish government into their hands. The Communists, closely linked to the Soviet Union, continued their active struggle against the Spanish government, while the other exile groups counted on the United Nations to replace the Franco regime. In early 1945, however, soon after the surrender of Nazi Germany, even the Communists joined forces with a new exile coalition, the Alianza Nacional de Fuerzas Democráticas.35 Conflicts between exile groups were so difficult that even émigré leaders declared that their case was hopeless, as did the Socialist and former Republican defense minister Indalecio Prieto in a speech in New York City: “We the emigrated revolutionary politicians, for one reason or another, 33. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 64. 34. “Report on the Assault of a Group of Reds against the Town of Charches, Near Guadix,” 1943, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia del Generalísimo Franco, vol. 4, 40–41. 35. De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 270, 278, 280–82, 284–85; Romeu Alfaro, “Panorámica Sociopolitical de los Primeros Movimientos Guerrilleros,” 363; Borrás, Políticas de los Exiliados Españoles, 14–16.


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have all become discredited and failures, and we will never return to play any part in Spain, even in case a Republic should be restored.”36 This speech was, of course, reported with some satisfaction by the official Spanish press, which was delighted to see conflict and dissension among the exiles. Among the regional groups, however, there was more optimism for an eventual victory. The Basques in particular were a distinctive group, the only separatist movement with a strong and organized presence abroad after the end of the civil war. With large colonies in the Americas and a distinctive language and culture, they were better able to preserve their identity than the Catalan and Galician movements, even though there were more Catalans in Spain and abroad. The Basques were also the principal nonleftist force among the exiles, as many Basques continued to be the strongly conservative Catholics they had been before the Nationalist uprising.37 In general, the hope of the Basques during the Second World War was that through making themselves useful to the Allies, they could earn the gratitude of the United States and United Kingdom. Through their efforts, they hoped to create an internationally recognized and independent Basque state in northern Spain and perhaps southern France, serving as an anti-Francoist and pro-Western buffer after the war. The Basques in exile optimistically expected to raise their profile from an Iberian to a continental status through their alliance with France, the United States, and the United Kingdom against Nazism and fascism. The Basques hoped that France would appreciate having a buffer state, to serve as a barrier against Spanish fascism, and that the United Kingdom would support a friendly democracy which would not allow its mines, ports, or industry to be used for actions against the British Empire. In some of their more elaborate schemes, Basque leaders proposed establishing a Pyrenean bloc of demilitarized Aragon-Catalonia (under French protection) and Euzkadi (under British protection).38 These fantasies emerged out of the crushing defeat Basques had suffered at the hands of Franco. During the civil war, the Basque regional government had aligned with the Republican government as the side most likely to guarantee its autonomy. Parts of the Basque country fell almost immediately to the Nationalists, other parts of the region remained loyal to the

36. Arriba, August 14, 1945. 37. Juan Carlos Jiménez de Aberasturi, De la Derrota a la Esperanza: Políticas Vascas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, xiii. 38. Ibid., xvii, 97, 121.


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Republic, while still other Basques remained neutral, a division also reflected in the Basque population. After being frustrated in his offensive against Madrid in 1936, in 1937 Franco turned his attention to northern Spain and the Basque country. For Franco, the resistance of this region, the only area in the Republican zone where the Catholic Church still functioned, inhibited the Nationalists’ ability to claim the complete support of the episcopacy in a crusade against the unfaithful.39 The Nationalist offensive against the Basque country began in March 1937 and was made most notorious by the German air attack on the historic city of Guernica in April. Although the small city was a legitimate target with key bridges, barracks, and arms factories, the firebombing of Guernica by German and Italian aircraft raised international condemnation. The Franco regime’s denials of involvement and false accusations that Communists had burned the city made the incident even worse for the Nationalists, as did the famous painting by Pablo Picasso, named after the town. By this time, however, bombing of cities was a routine practice by both the Republicans and the Nationalists, and continued to the end of the war.40 The campaign against the Basques continued after Guernica with great success. Aided by Italian troops, the Nationalist forces advanced on the industrial capital of Bilbao. Incorrectly believing that the Basque leaders were negotiating surrender, the Republican government withdrew its limited support, speeding the collapse of the autonomous region. After fierce fighting, the first Nationalist units entered Bilbao on June 19, and the remaining Basque militia units retreated from battle, refused resupply by the Republican government. While some Basque military formations fought subsequently against Franco’s forces, the fall of the Basque country and their perceived abandonment by the Republic broke the heart of the separatist movement. After the end of this battle, and continuing until the end of the Spanish Civil War, approximately fifty thousand Basques fled into France, along with several hundred thousand other Republican exiles.41 After the defeat of the Basque military, the Nationalist occupiers immediately banned the use of Euskera, the local language, in the harshest measures imposed on any of Spain’s regional languages. “Jail sentences were imposed for even casual conversation carried out in the language on public streets. Schools were not allowed to teach the language; and priests 39. Clark, The Basques, 57, 59. 40. Payne, The Franco Regime, 139–41; Jensen, Franco, 79–80. 41. Clark, The Basques, 73–76; Jiménez de Aberasturi, De la Derrota a la Esperanza, 177, 194.


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were prohibited from sermonizing in Euskera. In civil registries, entries of births, marriages and deaths that included Basque names were erased, and replaced with their Spanish equivalents. In a few areas, such as around Guernica, Basque inscriptions on tombstones and public buildings were scraped off.”42 With the defeat of the Republic on April 1, 1939, and with the exiled Republican leadership divided and in conflict, the Basques in exile (mostly in France) under the leadership of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) adopted a pro-independence position. Their hope was that an Allied intervention in Spain would bring about the establishment of an independent Euskadi as a buffer state against the pro-Nazi Franco regime. Abandoning their civil war alliance with the broader Republican movement, by 1940 the PNV leadership of the Basques under José Antonio Aguirre was promoting a “national policy,” advocating independence before all other considerations.43 The German invasion of May 1940 smashed the Basque political organization in France. PNV leader Aguirre went into hiding, and the Germans captured others. In London on July 11 some PNV leaders created the Consejo Nacional de Euskadi, to promote independence and collaborate with the Allies. In 1942, Aguirre, having escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe, dissolved the Consejo Nacional de Euskadi and began to establish close ties with the OSS, gathering intelligence in Europe and the Americas through the exile communities. Aguirre also hoped to unite the three separatist groups: Basques, Catalans, and Gallegos, to resist the Republicans in exile, but this did not come to fruition.44 Aguirre’s was not the first Basque espionage system established to aid the Allies. Another group, the Alava network, operated from late 1938 until late 1940 in France and Spain, gathering information about the Franco regime and German infiltration. After the fall of France, the Germans took possession of French intelligence information about the network. They relayed this to the Franco regime, which used the information to arrest most of the agents. The leader, Luis Alava, was executed on May 6, 1943, and twenty-seven others received long prison terms. Surprisingly few identified Basques died at the hands of the Nazis, with only sixty-four

42. Clark, The Basques, 81. 43. Juan Carlos Jiménez de Aberasturi, De la Guerra Civil a la Guerra Fría, 1939–1947: Cronología de Historia Contemporánea de País Vasco, 9–20, 33. 44. Ibid., 34–35, 79–80.


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confirmed deaths at the Mauthausen concentration camp, out of the seven thousand Spaniards who died there.45 Subsequent espionage rings that resulted from Aguirre’s interest in identifying with the Allies included the Gernika Network, named for the Basque town bombed by the Nazis in 1937. This espionage group organized in collaboration with the United Kingdom and United States to provide information about Axis forces and agents in Spain, France, and Latin America. Basques also organized the Comet Line, a network to evacuate Jews and downed Allied pilots from France to Portugal. This smuggling group rescued thirty-nine Jews and more than one hundred British, U.S., and other Allied aviators from 1940 to 1944. Other Basques played an important role in the French Resistance, forming independent cells or collaborating with the Allies in the liberation of France from June to August 1944.46 The Basque strategy of using Allied support to form an independent state failed because of the rise of the Soviet Union—leading to fears in the West of a renewal of communism—and the disunion of the Spanish exiles. Because of this disunity, partly the responsibility of Aguirre and the PNV, the Basque government in exile had little credibility with the Allies. While grateful for Basque assistance, including service by several thousand in the Free French forces, the prospect of the territorial division of Spain was not an attractive one to the United States or United Kingdom.47 In 1943 the PNV and Socialists in exile split openly over the issue of separatism, with the Socialists wanting to maintain the territorial integrity of Spain. The United Republican organization—Junta Española de Liberación—formed in December 1943 in Mexico City did not include representatives of the PNV or Basque government in exile, nor did it include real representation by the Communists. By August 1945, Aguirre and the PNV finally agreed that the Basques would participate in a government of national unity, rather than insisting on immediate independence.48 The Basques were the most organized pro-autonomy group, but they were not the only separatists. There were also movements in Galicia and Catalonia, but these were much weaker. Galicians were often of two minds

45. 46. 47. 90–91. 48.

Romaña Arteaga, La Segunda Guerra Mundial y los Vascos, 41–43, 65, 68. Ibid., 46–52, 117–19, 125; Clark, The Basques, 86–87. Jiménez de Aberasturi, De la Derrota a la Esperanza, xxxv–xxxvi; Clark, The Basques, Jiménez de Aberasturi, De la Guerra Civil a la Guerra Fría, 1939–1947, 100–101, 153.


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in regards to the regime, as Franco was a Gallego, born in El Ferrol, Galicia. Less than a month prior to the beginning of the civil war, Galicians voted for a statute of autonomy that would have allowed for linguistic and cultural autonomy, as was already the case with Catalonia and the Basque country. The Nationalist uprising succeeded quickly in the province, and Galicia was a critical base of labor and supplies during the remainder of the conflict. After the end of the civil war, the Gallego language did not face the same ban as Catalan and Basque, and in some cases writers were able to publish in the language. In exile, the few Galician leaders among the Republicans supported the replacement of Franco and autonomy for Galicia, but they were not a major group.49 In Catalonia, the civil war situation had been far different. The Nationalist uprising failed abjectly in the province, and Catalan separatists, led by the autonomous government of the Generalitat, were among the most important and consistent supporters of the Republican cause. Catalonia was also among the last zones to fall to Franco’s forces, with resistance continuing in some areas into February 1939. The Nationalist army entered Barcelona on January 26 and began a harsh occupation. One of the first decrees of the Nationalists in the province was the February 17 banning of Catalan, except in private and family life. The Falange and government also burned Catalan books and drove the language out of every corner of public life: radio, newspapers, education, churches, government offices, and businesses. The Germans in France captured the president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, during the course of their invasion. Soon after, they transferred custody to Franco, who ordered the Catalan executed on October 15, 1940, in the Castle of Montjuic, outside Barcelona.50 The clandestine use of Catalan, which had been an official language of Spain during the Second Republic, continued, with books published outside Spain, covert language classes, and underground publications in Catalonia. The Falange and Franco regime considered Catalan just a dialect of Spanish rather than an independent language and were strongly antiseparatist. The special military government of Catalonia ended on August 1, 1939, but the linguistic ban remained for decades. The civil governors of the province saw their mission as the “re-Spanishization” of Catalonia and

49. Fernández Santander, Alzamiento y Guerra Civil en Galicia, vol. 1, 50–60, 84–85, 408– 10; Xavier Costa Clavell, Las Dos Caras de Galicia Bajo el Franquismo, 11–12, 39–41, 48–49. 50. Josep Benet, Cataluña Bajo el Regimen Franquista, 13–14; Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 300–301.


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made almost no allowance for local customs, regarding them as subtle attempts to inspire Catalan nationalism. One of the first civil governors, who ruled the province from 1940 to 1945, was the Falangist Antonio Correa Véglison, whose only accommodation to Catalan identity was his permitting of the sardana, a traditional folk dance, but the music had to be accompanied by lyrics in Castellano Spanish, not Catalan.51 Representatives of Catalan nationalism, whether of the left or the right, did not hold important positions within the Franco regime. The priorities of the Franco regime in Catalonia, as in all provinces, were the repression of political life (through state-appointed officials, many of them local, and the Guardia Civil, almost none Catalan) and implementation of national economic policies. Mayors and other local officials could be replaced at will by the civil governor, which made local officials very intent on carrying out their duties. This had the additional effect of focusing resentment against the local government rather than Franco or the central state. While there was not much support for Franco in Catalonia, fear of chaos and civil war was a stronger sentiment than the desire for radical and immediate action against the state.52 The internal opposition was held almost completely in check, under attack as it was by the instruments of Francoist repression. During the course of the Spanish Civil War and in its aftermath, the Nationalist regime established an extensive legal and penal system to contain its enemies. While during the civil war most prisoners were captured Republican soldiers, during the last few months of the conflict and in the immediate postwar these numbers swelled dramatically. The reason for this was that the Nationalists began to prosecute not just those who had committed war crimes, but even Spaniards whose only crime was belonging to organizations considered subversive by the victors. From March to December 1939, the number of political prisoners officially held by the regime expanded from 100,000 to 270,000, a figure that excluded the hundreds of thousands of Republican soldiers held in prisoner-of-war camps, most of whom were gradually released during the first year after the end of the war. As late as May 1940, however, the Spanish government held almost 250,000 prisoners.53 Another category of those punished by the regime were those who did not merit imprisonment, but were still of concern, such as ordinary 51. Benet, Cataluña Bajo el Regimen Franquista, 15, 27, 70–71, 74, 99–100, 265, 275, 375–76. 52. Edward Hansen, Rural Catalonia under the Franco Regime, 9, 24–25, 135–40. 53. Nicolás Marín and Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo, 13; Jensen, Franco, 99.


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members of trade unions, peasants or workers who had been vocal opponents of the church or economic elites, or active members of liberal professional associations linked to the Republic. Rather than long prison terms or executions, these offenders often received sentences of “guarded liberty” or probation. While spared the cruel conditions of prison or labor battalions, these convicts still had to report periodically to supervising agents at local jails or prisons and were subject to increased surveillance by security forces and the Falange. They also could not leave their home province without permission of police officials, were banned from major cities, and could be incarcerated for even minor violations of their probation. Their limited freedom depended on continuing favorable reports from their local mayor, Falange chief, Guardia Civil commander, and parish priest.54 The legal basis for the arrest and detention of these prisoners was the Ley de Responsibilidades Políticas (Law of Political Responsibilities) of February 9, 1939, which made it a crime to have been an active member of any of the movements or parties affiliated with the Popular Front after October 1934. Even the charge of “serious passivity,” being a bystander during the Republic and civil war, became a crime. There were so many cases requiring investigation and prosecution that the government was forced to establish ten new special military tribunals to resolve potential violations of the law.55 Each tribunal typically had three members: an army officer, a member of the Falange, and a judge. Within their first two years of operation, these tribunals had processed approximately 125,000 active or passive opponents of the Francoist rebellion. Potential penalties included imprisonment, deportation, exile (often to Spain’s colonies), and economic sanctions (fines, work restrictions, enforced unemployment).56 Typical of the arrests conducted under the guidance of this law, many of which were recounted in the press, were several in November 1939: “Detentions: Diego Navarro Rojas, important element of the [anarchist] C.N.T., who worked in a libertarian circle, participating in the arson and sacking of the church and Augustinian convent of the Blessed Orozco; Ramón Torrecilla Guijarro, for having captured rightist persons, who were assassinated; Ignacio Aguilar Toledo, for having denounced rightist per-

54. Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 199; Francisco Moreno, “La Represión en la Posguerra,” 299. 55. Nicolás Marín and Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo, 17; Preston, Franco, 320; YA, November 11, 1939. 56. Francisco Moreno, “La Represión en la Posguerra,” 346; Richards, A Time of Silence, 45.


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sons [to the Republicans].” Those convicted under this law could have their assets confiscated, be exiled to the deserts and jungles of Spain’s African colonies, lose their Spanish citizenship, or suffer other penalties.57 The police had the obligation to arrest and bring before military tribunals members of the Spanish Communist Party or any functionary of the Republican government or member of its armies or institutions. From the introduction until the end of the Second World War, the government began investigations under this law on just more than 9 percent of the population. These proceedings often took years to complete, and it was not until April 1945 that the government declared the end of prosecutions for “Marxist rebellion.” Although many of these cases did not make it to the special military tribunals created to enforce the law, approximately seven hundred thousand Spaniards did have summary hearings based on their political actions during the Republic and civil war, and as many as four hundred thousand endured prisons or other forms of detention during the Second World War.58 In May 1940 the regime introduced the Law for the Repression of Masonry and Communism, targeting those who professed or acted in support of either movement. Franco had a particular obsession with Freemasonry, regarding it as a vanguard of anticlericalism, Republicanism, internationalism, and antimilitarism, and responsible for most of the misfortunes that had struck Spain since the seventeenth century. While Freemasons had been represented on both the Left and the Right during the Second Republic, Franco associated them with the Popular Front, and to be a Freemason was sufficient indictment to be imprisoned in Spain during the Second World War. Another law, in March 1941, instituted the death penalty for the crime of separatism.59 In place of rehabilitation, which had with it the possibility for returning to society, the Franco regime substituted a Catholic vision of moral “redemption” and the expiation of sins as the purpose of incarceration. By this, the government understood that prisoners had to earn their salvation through hard labor and religious devotion. Even those who were under sentence of death were expected and strongly pressured to ask for 57. Arriba, November 17, 1939; Clark, The Basques, 82. 58. Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 31; Pastor Petit, Espionaje: La Segunda Guerra Mundial y España, 691; Rodolfo Serrano and Daniel Serrano, Todo España Era un Cárcel: Memoria de los Presos del Franquismo, 19–21; Antón, Historia de la Policía Española, 354; YA, April 14, 1945. 59. Romero Salvadó, Twentieth Century Spain, 127; De la Cierva, Historia del Franquismo, 207–8; Preston, Franco, 323–24.


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God’s grace, yet they were unable to gain this forgiveness from the state. The Nationalists dramatically increased death penalty sentences to the highest level in Spanish history and created more concentration camps than ever, although they called such centers “labor camps, disciplinary battalions, militarized penitentiary colonies,” or other terms. The regime also allowed torture, as a means of gaining information as well as a punitive measure.60 As early as the spring of 1937, the Nationalist insurgents had begun using captured military and political prisoners as forced labor. By the end of 1938, the insurgent regime established more than forty concentration camps and fifty labor battalions. Prisoners received a tiny wage, between fifty centimos and two pesetas per day — 5 to 20 percent of the lowest daily pay for an unskilled laborer —with an extra peseta per day for every child. Hoping to encourage productivity, in October 1939 the Nationalists decreed that sentences could be reduced by up to two days for every one worked. Laboring on government projects or for private businesses favored by the government, prisoners often faced dangerous environments, such as in mining and construction.61 Even in the harsh conditions, there were limits as to what Franco would allow. For example, he vetoed sending Spanish prisoners or exiles captured in France as laborers to Germany, regarding this as an unnecessary security risk, despite requests by the Nazis for this measure. Despite Franco’s reluctance to authorize the official dispatch of Republican émigrés or prisoners to Germany, the Nazi leadership used its occupation of France to conscript approximately thirty thousand exiles for forced labor there and in the Third Reich. Franco was perfectly willing to allow torture and harsh treatment in Spanish prisons, but he did not trust the Germans with these prisoners.62 Prisoners could serve on several different kinds of work crews. Labor battalions used prisoners of war and, after 1939, conscripted soldiers who had previously served in Republican armies or militias. The “militarized penitentiary colonies” —groups of prisoners employed on public works projects and private projects judged to be “in the national interest”—were harsher, and commanded by military officers. Prisoners who reduced their sentences through good behavior and work were numerous: 13,000 in

60. Payne, The Franco Regime, 224; Horacio Roldán Barbero, Historia de la Prisión en España, 185, 186–87, 195–96; Santos Juliá, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, 288–89. 61. Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 41–44; Richards, A Time of Silence, 80; Santos Juliá, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, 339–42. 62. Bowen, Spaniards and Nazi Germany, 129, 140.


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1939, 19,000 in 1940, 18,000 in 1941, 24,000 in 1942, and 25,000 in 1943. In addition to the hard work and low wages, workers had to attend Catholic Mass, sing Nationalist anthems and songs, and endure compulsory classes on Falangist ideology.63 Many inmates actually asked to be placed in work units, rather than just detention in prison, since conditions were better and workers could earn at least a little money for their families. Starvation was also less endemic on work crews, since the rations were better than for those in prison. Food was so short in the penal system that as many as five thousand prisoners died during World War II from malnutrition or other maladies related to hunger. Thousands requested transfer to specific works projects, such as the construction of the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen). The regime welcomed these volunteers and promised every prisoner the right and the obligation to work as an effort to gain their redemption, although in practice the most incorrigible and resistant inmates remained confined to prisons.64 The project of the Valle de los Caídos was the most infamous labor program completed by prison labor during the Franco regime, although conditions there were better than in some other locations. The site, with its vast basilica carved into the heart of a granite mountain and graves for several thousand war dead, was to become a giant monument to the Nationalists who had died in the civil war. After an initial expectation that construction, begun on April 1, 1940, would take one year, the monument was not actually finished until 1954. The first prisoners arrived to work on the site in May 1943 and built the crypt, the monastery, and the road leading up to the monument. Prisoners worked on the project in battalions of approximately five hundred on site for one year, so that six or seven thousand rotated through the location before its end. Many of these workers returned as free laborers after their release, as their skills in excavation and construction were valuable to the project directors.65 Other inmates toiled on major construction projects, such as roads, canals, hydroelectric works, bridges, or even on prisons. Conditions for miners were particularly harsh, with many workers dying in Spain’s iron, mercury, coal, and pyrite mines. Between 1939 and 1946, prison laborers

63. Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 59–62, 68; Richards, A Time of Silence, 81. 64. Roldán Barbero, Historia de la Prisión en España, 187–88, 192; Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 155. 65. Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 115–18; Roldán Barbero, Historia de la Prisión en España, 193; Arriba, March 31, April 1, 1940.


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worked more than twenty million workdays, with 1942–1944 being the high point of the program. While the regime only admitted there were 3,500 prisoners engaged in public works, the numbers were much higher. During that period, there were 18,000 forced laborers, organized into 141 labor battalions, working outside of prisons on construction projects. An additional 50,000 worked in prison industries at the places of their incarceration, but these figures never rose above 70 percent of the prison population, as a certain number remained unfit, unwell, or unreliable. Many private employers preferred to use prisoners rather than free laborers, since the prisoners worked harder and had more incentives to do so. Dozens of private companies contracted with the state to hire these workers, with the added benefit that the government was not too concerned about injuries or even accidental deaths on the job. Private corporations also favored prison labor, because if a prisoner worked poorly or made too many mistakes, inmate laborers could be sent back to prison, and their families would receive no salary, meager as it was.66 In the regime’s efforts to “redeem” prisoners, chaplains played a key role. Even the smallest prison or labor camp had at least one assigned priest, with dozens at the larger centers and an official status as the “corps of prison chaplains.” Chaplains had the responsibility for censoring prisoners’ mail and had the principal charge of seeking confessions and repentance from them. Priests also served on tribunals for those seeking amnesty, probation, or parole.67 There were several such programs granting early release. The first was in October 1939, when Franco ordered the discharge of political prisoners whose sentences were for less than six years, provided they had not committed any violent crimes against civilians or Nationalists. In January 1940 the government promised to hold newly arrested prisoners for no more than thirty days without pressing charges. Most of these amnesties were intended for people who had been members of Republican political parties or organizations, but had not participated in direct actions against the Church or other elements of the Nationalist coalition. As many as forty thousand political prisoners received amnesty on April 1, 1941, the second anniversary of the Nationalist victory, with another twenty thousand released in October. Another round of amnesties freed an additional fifty

66. Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 179–80, 187, 327–30; Preston, Franco, 351–52; Roldán Barbero, Historia de la Prisión en España, 193–95; Richards, A Time of Silence, 81–83; Arriba, January 1, 1944. 67. Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 299.


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thousand over the next six months, and Franco commuted half of the fifty thousand death sentences pronounced up to that point. In the final two years of the Second World War, as Franco attempted to gain favor with the Allies, there were other amnesties, releasing those with prison sentences of less than twenty years. Most had already served up to five years in harsh conditions, and many had died from starvation, disease, and mistreatment, but they were paroled nonetheless. In all of these cases, the only prisoners eligible for these amnesties were those who professed Catholicism, as certified by prison chaplains.68 In December 1943 the Spanish government offered conditional liberty to all political prisoners with less than twenty-year prison sentences, except those who had been convicted of violent crimes against the Nationalists. This parole, however, was supervised and only awarded to inmates who had no record of disciplinary problems or resistance to the teachings of the state or Church. Still, by December 31, 1945, Spain’s official prison population had fallen to just over 40,000, from a 1939 figure of 270,000. Of these, only 17,000 were political prisoners, a number that compares favorably with other periods of revolution and counterrevolution in twentiethcentury Europe.69 Released prisoners did not escape from other obligations, as all ablebodied males were still subject to two years of compulsory military service. Those who had completed their sentences with good behavior served in regular army units, while those who had been disciplinary problems had to endure the even harsher conditions of disciplinary battalions, sent to complete the most unpleasant and dangerous tasks, such as clearing minefields and unexploded ordnance.70 Another duty of prison chaplains during World War II was to prepare condemned prisoners for their execution, attempting to gain their souls for the Catholic Church before their physical lives were extinguished. In this effort, they were successful: close to 80 percent of prisoners on death row repented of their sins against the regime and the church before their executions. Despite their intervention to promote the spiritual salvation of inmates, chaplains were forbidden to intervene in prisoners’ cases or to use their good offices to assist in any ways beyond spiritual comfort and 68. Payne, The Franco Regime, 226–27; Lafuente, Esclavos por la Patria, 49, 55; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 46. YA, January 11, 1940; Arriba, October 3, 1939; Tomasa Cuevas, Prison of Women: Testimonies of War and Resistance in Spain, 1939–1975, 106; Francisco Moreno, “La Represión en la Posguerra,” 359. 69. YA, March 31, 1943; Payne, The Franco Regime, 223. 70. Arriba, August 21, 1940.


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guidance. During the Second World War, executions in Nationalist Spain were not spectator sports, but instead were supposed to be done quickly, efficiently, and without honor for the victims or closure for their families, who were not allowed to attend the event.71 There is substantial debate on the number of executions perpetrated by the Nationalist government during the Second World War, with approximations ranging from as low as twenty thousand to as high as one hundred thousand, almost all of these during the first two years after the end of the conflict. The true number was most likely around fifty thousand, but shortfalls in the archival record make this hard to establish. By some estimates, 62 percent of these deaths occurred in 1939, many even before the civil war ended. Thousands more died because of the harsh conditions, including food shortages and hard labor, in the Nationalist prison system. In an attempt to deny the humanity of those terminated, in many cases the regime refused to issue death certificates or allow the deaths to be entered in church or civil registries.72 For all of their declarations of loyalty to the state and Church, most prisoners hoped for a regime change, the fortunes of which they saw as tied to the success or failure of the Axis. For example, upon hearing of the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943, there were spontaneous demonstrations in prisons and labor camps throughout Spain, as the incarcerated believed this heralded the approaching end of Franco’s rule. Similar celebrations, especially in urban prisons and factories, followed news of the fall of Mussolini in summer 1943, and even more so with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in May 1945.73 The case of female prisoners was particularly tragic. Constituting nearly 10 percent of the prison population, their official numbers ranged from a high of twenty thousand in 1940–1941 to just over five thousand in 1945, although these figures may have been understated by as much as 50 percent. As many as four thousand women, mostly Catalans, were held at the prison Les Corts, near Barcelona. In a gesture to their support for strong families, the regime allowed children under the age of four to stay with their mothers in prison, but after that age religious institutions or Catholic 71. Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 258, 260, 262, 264; Martí Gómez, La España del Estraperlo, 40. 72. Nicolás Marín and Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo, 14–15; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 47–48; Serrano and Serrano, Todo España Era un Cárcel, 41; Richards, A Time of Silence, 30–31. 73. Garriga, La España de Franco, vol. 2, 68; Richards, A Time of Silence, 158; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 61.


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families adopted them. Almost none of these adopted children were ever reunited with their birth mothers, even after the women were released from prison.74 After their release, most women remained banned from government jobs and most other work opportunities and were often denied ration cards and other state benefits for themselves and their families. Consequently, many were forced to resort to black-market dealings and prostitution. For those convicted again, this time for habitual prostitution, the regime established special prisons in which they received teaching and spiritual guidance from Catholic nuns. Some nuns behaved kindly to the inmates, but others could be cruel to those they regarded as sinners or who refused to go to confession.75 Internal dissent and open opposition to Franco remained very limited. While some ragged units of the Republican forces continued to fight on even after the end of the civil war, for the most part this was a minor problem for the police and Guardia Civil. The few thousand soldiers and other supporters of the Republican government who took refuge in the mountains to continue fighting were never a major security threat to the Francoist state. Several thousand more joined the insurgents during the Second World War, mostly fleeing prosecution, torture, or execution by the Spanish government. Either ignored by the government, or crushed by the Guardia Civil when the insurgents attacked government targets, these early rebels were little more than a nuisance. While it had many opponents, the regime was not without support and could count on nearly unqualified backing from the majority of the middle classes, the business community, the Catholic Church, much of the rural landowning peasantry, the military, and the beneficiaries of government jobs and contracts: a sufficient base to rule, although hardly with unanimity.76 The most frequent security problem was associated with food shortages: riots in the countryside against the confiscation of grain and other agricultural products by the central government. As early as 1940, villages rose up in protest against the regime’s farm policies, even destroying crops rather than surrendering them to the government. Sporadic efforts by 74. Campo Alange, La Mujer en España, 350; Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 266; Richards, A Time of Silence, 53; Sánchez and Pomés, Historia de Barcelona, 298–99. 75. Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco, 266–67; Barbero, Historia de la Prisión en España, 203; Cuevas, Prison of Women, 47, 104–5. 76. Preston, Franco, 334; Romeu Alfaro, “Panorámica Sociopolitical de los Primeros Movimientos Guerrilleros,” 365, 375–76; Gracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 59; Francisco Moreno Gómez, “La Represión en la España Campesina,” 202–4.


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underground cells to foment revolution did not flourish, but there was consistent grumbling and sincere unhappiness with the incompetence and corruption of the government. Despite the regime’s efforts to repress dissent, opponents expressed their anti-Francoist sentiments through graffiti, absenteeism, work slowdowns, and covert assistance to Socorro Rojo, a “mutual assistance organization” that channeled money to the families of prisoners and exiles. However, “collective worker dissent was, indeed, relatively rare in the early 1940s.”77 Even though Allied victory in 1945 convinced many exiles that the fall of Franco was imminent, British and U.S. disinterest and the division of the exiles into squabbling factions undermined this possibility. Republicans, Socialists, and anarchists waited for the Allies, while Communists began military action against the Franco regime. The best the exiles could achieve were condemnations of Franco by the United Nations in 1945 and 1946, and the withdrawal of most ambassadors from the Spanish capital. Some states, including Mexico and Yugoslavia, recognized the Republican government in exile as the legitimate representative of the Spanish people, but Franco remained in power long after most exile groups abandoned their efforts.78 With the beginning of the Cold War, however, “the Western democracies preferred a right-wing dictator in Spain instead of a revolutionary or communist government.” Franco understood that what the United States and United Kingdom most feared in Spain was chaos, another civil war, and a Communist victory, and he was able to use these worries to weaken British and American support for exile groups, economic sanctions, and other actions against the Franco regime.79 In the end, Franco did not fall from power, despite the efforts of the many and diverse opponents of the regime, in Spain and in exile, and died peacefully in November 1975, his power still intact and his opponents still divided.

77. Richards, A Time of Silence, 141, 143–44, 156–59. 78. Nicolás Marín and Alted Vigil, Disidencias en el Franquismo, 27–30. 79. Martín Casas and Carvajal Urquijo, El Exilio Español, 198–200; Florentino Portero, “Spain, Britain and the Cold War,” 212–16.


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Conclusion

M

ore than sixty years after the end of World War II, and thirty years after the death of El Caudillo, the Franco regime continues to stir passions in Spain. The work that stimulated much of this dialogue was Santos Juliá, ed., Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, which provoked a reexamination of the perpetrators and policies of the Franco regime during the civil war. This book has led to a revival of interest in the early years of Franco’s government within Spain and the international historical community, as well as within the Spanish state. In the environment of reexamination stimulated by this and other studies, the Spanish Congress of Deputies voted in 1999 to condemn the Nationalist uprising of 1936 as a “fascist military coup.”1 While that study focuses on the repression of the Republican opposition in the civil war and its aftermath, it also provides insights to the nature of Francoism and the instruments of police control it established. The authors of this volume placed responsibility for the launching of the civil war, as well as for the greatest number of executions, on the Francoist rebels. Another similar volume is Morir, Matar, Sobrevivir: La Violencia en la Dictadura de Franco, edited by Julián Casanova, which also reads as a denunciation of the Franco regime as the origin of all malevolence in Spain during the civil war and years that followed. While Juliá’s edition argued for the intentionalism of the Nationalist violence against the Second Republic and its supporters, and for the democratic legitimacy of the government defeated during the Spanish Civil War, others have debated this thesis. Stanley Payne and others argue persuasively that while the war did not begin until 1936, the revolutionary 1. Congreso de los Diputados, September 14, 1999, Proposicion No de Ley 161/001612.

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Left—Spain’s Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists—had already abandoned constitutional and democratic legitimacy in the months before the Nationalist rebels rose against the Republic in July 1936. After winning the elections of February 1936, the Left began a wide-reaching campaign to destroy the Spanish Right. The Socialist Party and other members of the Popular Front coalition characterized every party on the Right as fascist, launching a wave of violence and chaos against conservatives: church burnings, assassinations, illegal arrests, fraudulent elections, expropriations of religious institutions, and other attacks on Catholic, conservative, and rightist property and persons. The Socialists saw democracy as a means to achieve revolution, rather than a system worth preserving, and refused to respect electoral victories by conservative parties. Even when the military rose against the Popular Front, it initially did so in the name of the Republic, the constitution, and democracy. It was only in the context of the failed uprising that this attempted military coup became a civil war of long duration, pitting the revolutionaries of the Popular Front against the Nationalist counterrevolutionaries of Franco’s coalition.2 Other historians, most notably Pío Moa, have entered the discussion with even more fervor, comparing the Socialists—the largest leftist party— with CEDA, its counterpart on the Right. Moa dates the beginning of the Spanish Civil War as far back as 1934, when Socialists and Anarchists attempted an uprising to prevent the conservative CEDA from taking power, despite its emergence as the largest bloc after free elections in 1933. Socialists, anarchists, and separatists, according to Moa, were only interested in elections that would validate their rule rather than provide real competition and alternation in power between the Left and the Right. He contrasts CEDA’s defense of the constitution and laws during the rebellion of 1934 to the Left’s disregard for both and efforts to begin a revolution even before the uprising of July 1936. CEDA was a coalition of conservative parties, but overall it was more democratic than the Socialists. It had no militia, did not organize attacks on its enemies, respected the constitution when it was in power, did not commit murders, and followed the law. According to Moa: “The Right rebelled in July 1936 . . . against a real and imminent revolutionary danger, the reverse of the Leftist revolution of 1934, organized against a non-existent fascist danger that the insurrectionists knew did not exist.”3 2. Stanley Payne, “Los Origines de la Guerra Civil Española” in Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza and Luis Eugenio Togores, eds., Revisión de la Guerra Civil Española (Madrid: Editorial Actas, 2002), 21, 23–25, 28. 3. Pío Moa, Los Crímenes de la Guerra Civil, 27, 33, 40, 43, 44–45, 52.


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This debate is only beginning to focus on Spain during World War II, but it does have significant applicability. Historians on the Left have too often disregarded the widespread support enjoyed by the Nationalists during the civil war and by the Franco regime during its aftermath. More common than popularity, however, was the grim acceptance of Francoism as the more acceptable alternative to the revolutionary Left. Had Spain’s Socialists, Communists, anarchists, and separatists accepted the legitimacy of Spain’s conservative forces—at least 35 percent of the electorate—the Republic might have survived. While elements within the Nationalist movement of 1936—most notably the Falangist and certain military factions— refused to reconcile to democracy after 1931, they were a minority. Even Francisco Franco, leader and later dictator of the New Spain, served faithfully under the Republic from 1931 until early 1936. While he remains responsible for the misdeeds of his rule, that he came to rule at all resulted from the revolutionary intentions of the Left, which drove many Spaniards to reject Spain’s first democracy and embrace counterrevolution in 1936. This book was an effort to recover and represent the experience of Spaniards during the Second World War, not just as spectators to the global conflict then occurring, but as subjects of a poor country struggling to survive under repression, internal political infighting, and the challenges of constructing a new government and economy after the ravages of a civil war and economic depression. Adding to the significant burdens of the time was the ambivalence of the Franco regime itself, which did not have a clear vision for Spain beyond preserving authoritarianism and destroying the enemies of the state—its rivals during the Spanish Civil War. Spain during the Second World War was a nation beset by many troubles and much suffering: a corrupt and inefficient regime, a soured economy, a population divided and mutually hostile, and the machinations of external powers, each interested in manipulating Spain and its leaders to their own ends. At the top of this mess was the dictator, Generalísimo Francisco Franco, whose decisions determined the fate of millions of Spaniards. Although his rule depended on the benign neglect of the Axis and Allied powers, neither of which directly brought World War II to Spanish territory, Franco nonetheless was responsible, and claimed responsibility, for much that happened in Spain during this period. Although not always well considered or based on empirical bases, Franco’s decrees moved Spain in many directions. It was his policies that established Spain as an authoritarian dictatorship with one legal, although toothless, political party. It was Franco who embraced autarchic economic policies, preventing Spain from modernizing and rebuilding more rapidly


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in the post–civil war years. Finally, it was Franco who implemented policies that kept one-half of Spain permanently hostile to, and suspicious of, the other half, through his punitive measures against those who had supported the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War. Characterized by his own pragmatism and narrow vision, the regime achieved little success during the Second World War beyond its own preservation. Through his alliance with, and dependence on, the Catholic Church, Franco staked out the cultural limits of Nationalist Spain: conservative morality and strict traditionalism. This version of National Catholicism imbued all aspects of Spanish society, from the makeup of the cabinet to film censorship to bans on Carnaval and revealing swimwear. The Catholic Church during World War II became the increasingly critical pedestal of the regime, especially as the Falange became a political embarrassment in the fading of Axis fortunes. The church also buttressed the status of women in society, supervised through the institution of the Women’s Section of the Falange. Absent the ideological and spiritual support of the Catholic Church, it is hard to imagine the creation and sustenance of the Franco regime, not just during World War II but also into the thirty more years of the dictatorship, which ended only in 1975. Because of the divisions in Spain that began during the Spanish Civil War but survived until the transition to democracy, it is perhaps not entirely accurate to speak of “Spanish Culture and Leisure,” or even “The Spanish Economy.” Participation in both of these areas remained circumscribed by one’s political pedigree. Those who had supported the Spanish Republic during the civil war continued to suffer from political, social, and economic discrimination in a significant way. Not just government jobs, but often educational opportunities, civil rights, and even ration cards remained cut off for many who had identified with the forces of the Popular Front during World War II. Still, over time the regime allowed more former Republicans to reintegrate into society, through parole for detainees, periodic amnesties, and enticements to exiles to return to Spanish territory. Franco rejected major proposals to integrate Republicans into Nationalist Spain, however, even those suggested by leading church figures or high appointees within the Falange, such as Secretary General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, who in 1939 and 1940 encouraged forgiveness and amnesties for the vast majority. Spain remained two nations. Spain was in a unique situation during World War II—emerging into its own postwar period in 1939 even as the rest of the continent was plunging into a terrible conflagration. Being out of cycle with European events was nothing new for Spain, as it had become a democratic republic in 1931,


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even as authoritarian and fascist dictatorships had begun to sweep Europe. This seclusion continued after the Second World War, as much of the world considered Spain a nasty vestige of the New Order since the Franco regime owed its existence in large measure to aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In many ways, Spain’s political isolation did not end until the mid-1950s, when the United States led the acceptance of the Franco regime into the United Nations and also signed agreements validating Spain as a valued ally in the Cold War. Although the Spanish economy began to grow appreciably in the late 1950s, Spaniards had suffered from more than two decades of relative stagnation, political repression, and economic weakness: the legacy of a civil war and the dictatorship that followed. Spain during the Second World War deserves more study as perhaps the strongest negative example in Western Europe: a nation with tremendous potential, prevented from developing into a modernized state because of the poor political decisions made by its leaders, from those who initiated and fought the civil war to those who perpetuated outdated and harsh economic and political practices after its end. Like the man who led it, Spain’s history during this period will remain one characterized by ambivalence, frustrated dreams, and the vision of the dictator, pragmatic and enigmatic, who ruled it during this period.


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Index Acción Católica, 172, 207, 209–11, 212 Alfonso XIII, 73, 74, 198 Anti-Comintern Pact, 21 Aranda, Gen. Antonio, 22, 74 Argentina, 51, 133 Arrese, José Luis de, 86–87, 88–89, 89–90, 91, 195, 227 Aznar, Agustín, 41, 89, 142 Basques and Basque Country, 42, 114, 144, 202, 229, 241–45 Beigbeder, Col. Juan, 23, 33–34 Blue Division (División Azul), 3, 41, 72, 96, 163, 167, 219; withdrawal, 51, 52– 53, 192, 194, 195 Blue Squadron (Escuadrilla Azul), 45, 72 Borbón, Juan de (Don Juan), 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 Canaris, Admiral Wilhelm, 38 Carceller, Demetrio, 19 Catalans and Catalonia, 42, 144, 148, 229, 246–47, 254 Churchill, Winston, 45, 55, 57, 91 Ciano, Galeazzo, 20, 38–39, 176–77 Consejo de la Hispanidad, 50–51 Disney, Walt, 162–63 Espinosa de los Monteros, Gen. Eugenio, 29 Falange Español Tradicionalista y de las JONS (Falange), 26 Faupel, Gen Wilhelm von, 19, 175

Finat Escriva, José (Count of Mayalde): director general of security, 35–36, 232; and Blue Division, 42–43; ambassador to Germany, 46–47, 49 France: and the Spanish Republic, 13, 18, 236–37; establishes ties to Franco regime, 22–23; trade with Spain, 25, 94, 118, 132; North Africa, 27, 29–30; surrender to Germany, 29–30; Vichy regime, 37, 149, 152, 162, 237–38 Free French, 57, 74, 234, 239 Freemasonry, 103–4, 249 Germany: aid to Nationalists in Civil War, 19, 20–21; trade with Spain, 99, 115–17; cultural relations, 138, 141, 149, 150, 155–56, 160, 213–15 Gibraltar, 23, 26, 30, 32–33, 37–38, 39, 40, 45, 61, 74 Giménez Caballero, Ernesto, 41, 191 Giménez, Celia, 192–93 Girón, José Antonio, 41, 84, 91, 126– 27, 134 Gómez Jordana, Gen. Francisco, 22, 49, 50, 55–56, 88–89, 107, 215 Hayes, Carlton, 48, 55, 57 Himmler, Heinrich, 35–36 Hitler, Adolf, 17, 95; meeting with Franco, 36–37, 117–18; loses interest in Spain, 37–38; praises Blue Division, 44 Hoare, Samuel, 33–34, 57, 74, 77 Hungary, 152, 153, 190; compared to Spain, 5, 61–62

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Index

Instituto Nacional de Industria, 99, 114 Italy, 145; aid to Nationalists in civil war, 19, 20–21; enters WWII, 28; trade, 115–17

Primo de Rivera, Miguel (Falangist), 84, 169, 174, 188 Primo de Rivera, Pilar, 80–81, 84, 170– 76, 178–79, 187–96, 235

Japan: attack on Spaniards in Philippines, 57–59; surrender, 91 Jews: Nazi persecution, 44, 190–91; Spanish anti-Semitism, 47, 190, 218– 19; protection by Spain, 55

Quiepo de Llano, Gen. Gonzalo, 22, 69 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 28–29, 34–35 Ridruejo, Dionisio, 41, 84 Riefenstahl, Leni, 159 Romania, 152, 190; compared to Spain, 5

Kindelán, Gen. Alfredo, 22, 76, 82 League of Nations: and the Spanish Republic, 13–14; and the Franco regime, 21–22; and the Falange, 32 Martín Artajo, Alberto, 59, 91, 209, 226–27 Mexico, 236, 238, 241, 256 Morocco (Spanish), 31–32, 48 Moscardó, General José, 19–20, 143– 44, 148 Muñoz Grandes, Gen. Agustín: commander at Gibraltar, 37; commander of Blue Division, 43–44, 45, 68–69; and Morocco, 49; leader of pro-German generals, 75; secretary-general, 81–82 Mussolini, Benito, 20; meets with Franco, 38–39; fall from power, 52–53, 140, 254 Non-Intervention Agreement, 13–15, 18–19 Opus Dei, 138–39, 207, 211–12, 226 Pétain, Marshal Henri, 23, 39 Pius XII, Pope, 190, 205, 206, 208, 210, 214, 218 Poland, 23–24, 113, 219 Popular Front, 11–12, 18, 94, 128, 141, 182–83, 248 Portugal, 25, 26, 50, 73, 90, 96, 117, 118, 132, 145, 149, 153, 190 Primo de Rivera, José, 32, 35, 78, 79–80, 103, 104, 139, 150, 163, 172, 173, 215–16 Primo de Rivera, Miguel (dictator), 11, 198

Salvador Merino, Gerardo, 100–104, 187–88, 189 Sanz Bachiller, Mercedes, 81, 171, 174, 176 Serrano Suñer, Ramón: preference for Italy, 20; negotiations with Germany, 34–35; and Blue Division, 41, 42, 46; as foreign minister, 50, 60, 220; interior minister and adviser to Franco, 65, 100, 217; and Falange, 78–79, 80, 81, 87, 150 Soviet Union, 59, 113; and Spanish Republicans, 13–14, 105, 236, 241; and the Franco regime, 21, 24, 32, 59; invasion of Finland, 26–27; focus of Nazi Germany, 60 Spanish-American War, 26 Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), 12–15, 18, 113, 135, 142, 145, 172–73, 184, 197–98 Spanish Republic (1931–1936) and Republicans, 11–12, 127, 136, 198– 200, 234–42, 250–51, 257–59 Stöhrer, Eberhard von, 34, 50, 154 Tangier, 30–31, 62 Tovar Llorente, Antonio, 79, 84, 139–40 Tungsten ore, 54, 56, 96, 108, 122, 133 United Kingdom: and the Spanish Republic, 13; bribes to Spanish generals, 22, 33; establishes ties to Franco regime, 22–23; trade, 24–25, 40, 45, 47–48, 51–52, 71, 94, 108, 115– 17, 118, 129–30, 132; diplomatic pressure, 49, 122


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Index United Nations, 59, 94, 132 United States: entry into war, 47; relations with Spain, 49–50, 52–53, 55, 94; trade, 51–52, 54, 71, 108, 115–17, 122, 129–30; cultural relations, 159– 60, 161, 162

Valdes Larrañaga, Manuel, 104 Vigón, Gen. Juan, 27–28 Workers (in Germany), 54, 119–20 Yagüe Blanco, Gen. Juan, 75, 82–83 Yugoslavia, 22, 92, 113, 143, 256

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