Famous Faces of the Spanish Civil War: Writers and Artists in the Conflict, 1936–1939

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

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Copyright © Steve Hurst, 2009

ISBN 978 1 84415 952 9

eISBN 9781844685080

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Contents

List of Maps

List of Photographs

Chronology

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One – Granada

The Death of a Poet: Federico García Lorca

Chapter Two – Seville

The Antagonists: Koestler and Queipo de Llano

Chapter Three – Toledo

The Propaganda War: Luis Quintanilla and Felicia Browne

Chapter Four – Estramadura

The Other Side of the Line: Roy Campbell, Peter Kemp, and Frank Thomas

Chapter Five – Aragón

The Death of Another Poet: John Cornford

Chapter Six – Madrid

The Schoolboy Who Lived to Tell the Tale: Esmond Romilly

Chapter Seven – Malaga

The Prisoners: Koestler and Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell

Chapter Eight – Jarama

The Journalists: Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn

Chapter Nine – Barcelona

The Committed: Orwell and Eileen Blair

Chapter Ten – Guernika

The Artists: Picasso and Dora Maar

Chapter Eleven – Teruel

The Turning Point: The Fifteenth Brigade

Chapter Twelve – The Ebro

The Tragedy: Men Against Machines

Epilogue

Appendices

Glossary

Note on Terminology

Bibliography

Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Baked Beans (Premonition of Civil War).

Federico Garcia Lorca as director of La Barraca travelling theatre.

A group of young writers, artists and musicians paying tribute to the painter Hernando Vines in a Madrid café, May 1936.

Sixth from the left and standing – Federico Garcia Lorca.

Eighth from the left and standing – Luis Bunuel

Second from the right and seated – Gustavo Duran

The ‘Radio General’ Queipo de Llano, July 1936.

General Franco with Colonel Yague at the Yanduri Palace, Seville, Summer 1936.

Militiawomen in Barcelona.

Luis Quintanilla.

Esmond Romilly.

Eric Blair (Orwell)

The Siege of the Alcazar in Toledo. Militiamen firing at the garrison.

Peter Kemp, the Cambridge undergraduate, in the uniform of an officer of the Spanish Foreign Legion.

Roy Campbell. A drawing by Wyndham Lewis.

Madrid. Shell damage to a street in the center, Calle Marques de Santa Ana.

John Cornford.

The Tom Mann Centuria (The forerunner of the International Brigades). Left to right standing: Sid Avener, Nat Cohen (leader of the group), Ramona, Jack Barry and David Marshal. Kneeling are Tom Wintringham and Georgio Tioli.

Bomb crater, Puerto del Sol, Madrid.

British volunteer firing a Lewis gun, Madrid.

Ruins of the university city.

Captain Luis Bolin.

Civilians executed by the advancing Nationalists in Malaga.

One of the identifying photographs of Arthur Koestler taken when he was arrested in Malaga.

Hemingway close to the front line. From right to left: journalists Vincent Sheean, Herbert Mathews, Ernest Hemingway.

The Commissar Gustav Regler with officers of the French Battalion (Regler is the third from the left wearing a knitted balaclava).

Guadalajara. Italians of the Garibaldi Battalion with a megaphone attempting to persuade their fellow countrymen in the opposing trenches to surrender.

Eric Blair (Orwell) with other volunteers of the POUM about to leave the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona for the Aragon Front.

Barcelona street barricades (Calle del Hospital, near Ramblas).

The ruins of Guernica after the air raids by the Nazi Condor Legion.

Picasso painting Guernica.

Ernest Hemingway with Republican soldiers.

The city of Teruel from the hill of La Muela.

Teruel. Nationalist troops advancing in the snow.

Republican troops crossing the Ebro.

Commandante Gustavo Duran with staff officers.

Salvador Dali presents General Franco with a painting commemorating his victory.

List of Maps

1. The division of Spain: July 1936

2. Southern Spain: The advance of the Army of Africa August – September 1936

3. The Aragon Front: Huesca to Saragossa 1936–1938

4. Madrid: General map of the area

5. Madrid: The battle for the university city October 1936 to January 1937

6. Malaga: The siege January-February 1937

7. West of Madrid: Fuencarral, Boadilla and Brunete December 1936–February 1937

8. The division of Spain: January 1937

9. Jarama: The struggle for the Valencia road east of Madrid

10. The Battle of Jarama: Advance of The Fifteenth Brigade

11. Guadalajara: The battle March 1937

12. Barcelona: Street fighting July 1936

13. Barcelona: Street-fighting May–June 1937

14. Bilbao and Guernika April–June 1937

15. The division of Spain: January 1938

16. Saragossa: The Republican advance autumn 1937

17. Teruel: The Republican victory December 1937

18. Teruel: The Nationalist counterattack January 1938

19. The Battle of the Ebro: The retreat March–July 1938

20. The Battle of the Ebro: March–April 1938

21. The Battle of the Ebro: The river crossing July–November 1938

22. The division of Spain: December 1938

Maps drawn by the author

List of Photographs

1. Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Baked Beans (Premonition of Civil War).

2. A group of young writers, artists and musicians paying tribute to the painter Hernando Vines in a Madrid café, May 1936. Seventh from the left and standing – Federico Garcia Lorca. Ninth from the left and standing – Luis Bunuel. Eighth from the left and seated – Gustavo Duran.

3. Federico Garcia Lorca as director of La Barraca travelling theatre.

4. The ‘Radio General’ Queipo de Llano, July 1936.

5. General Franco with Colonel Yague at the Yanduri Palace, Seville, Summer 1936.

6. Militiawomen in Barcelona.

7. Luis Quintanilla.

8. Esmond Romilly.

9. Eric Blair (Orwell).

10. The Siege of the Alcazar in Toledo. Militiamen firing at the garrison.

11. Peter Kemp, the Cambridge undergraduate, in the uniform of an officer of the Spanish Foreign Legion.

12. Roy Campbell. A drawing by Wyndham Lewis.

13. Madrid. Shell damage to a street in the center, Calle Marques de Santa Ana.

14. John Cornford.

15. The Tom Mann Centuria (The forerunner of the International Brigades). Left to right standing: Sid Avener, Nat Cohen (leader of the group), Ramona, Jack Barry and David Marshal. Kneeling are Tom Wintringham and Georgio Tioli.

16. Bomb crater, Puerto del Sol, Madrid.

17. British volunteer firing a Lewis gun, Madrid.

18. Ruins of the university city.

19. Captain Luis Bolin.

20. Civilians executed by the advancing Nationalists in Malaga.

21. One of the identifying photographs of Arthur Koestler taken when he was arrested in Malaga.

22. Hemingway close to the front line. From right to left: journalists Vincent Sheean, Herbert Mathews, Ernest Hemingway.

23. The Commissar Gustav Regler with officers of the French Battalion (Regler is the third from the left wearing a knitted balaclava).

24. Guadalajara. Italians of the Garibaldi Battalion with a megaphone attempting to persuade their fellow countrymen in the opposing trenches to surrender.

25. Eric Blair (Orwell) with other volunteers of the POUM about to leave the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona for the Aragon Front.

26. Barcelona street barricades (Calle del Hospital, near Ramblas).

27. The ruins of Guernica after the air raids by the Nazi Condor Legion.

28. Picasso painting Guernica.

29. Ernest Hemingway with Republican soldiers.

30. The city of Teruel from the hill of La Muela.

31. Teruel. Nationalist troops advancing in the snow.

32. Republican troops crossing the Ebro.

33. Commandante Gustavo Duran with staff officers.

34. Salvador Dali presents General Franco with a painting commemorating his victory.

Chronology

1931

Fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The King, Alfonso XIII, flees the country. The Second Republic. The Church opposes the Government on State Education. Anarchist church-burning and assassinations. Right-wing and separatist assassinations. Plots by Left and Right.

1932

El Golpe. The attempted insurrection by General Sanjurjo.

1933

CEDA formed, the right-wing alliance led by Gil Robles. Formation of Falange Española by José Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of the deposed dictator).

1934

The October revolution. Madrid, Barcelona and in the Asturias mining region. Revolt in Asturias put down with great brutality and loss of life by the Army of Africa led by Colonel (later General) Yagüe. In overall control at HQ in Madrid: General Francisco Franco.

1935

Assassination and provocation by both sides, extreme Left and extreme Right. Violence reaches a crescendo following victory by the Left in elections.

1936

16 Feb – The Popular Front wins the elections.

13 July – The leader of the Right-wing Renovacion Espanola, Jose Calvo Sotelo, is assassinated.

17 July – Military rebellion in Morocco.

18/19 July - Military rebellion throughout Spain.

23 July – The Rebels form ‘The Committee of National Defence’.

7 Aug – Franco’s HQ in Seville.

13/14 Aug – Nationalists take Badajoz with great savagery (during the first month both sides killed a great number of military and civilians. Hugh Thomas estimates above 100,000).

28 Sept – Franco made Generalisimo and Head of State.

7 Oct – Nationalists attack Madrid.

Nov – First units of the International Brigades arrive in Madrid.

20 Dec – Battle of Boadilla (Madrid).

1937

14 Jan to 7 Feb – Siege of Malaga.

8 Feb – Italians and Army of Africa control Malaga.

6 to 23 Feb – Battle of Jarama Valley.

8 to 22 March – Battle of Guadalajara. End of Nationalist attempt to take Madrid.

April – Franco creates a single party, FET y de las JONS.

26 April – Guernika destroyed by German and Italian aircraft.

May to June – Fighting in Barcelona between anarchist militias and POUM on one side and Government troops on the other.

6 to 25 Jul – Battle of Brunete.

24 Aug to 14 Sep – Aragón front. Republican attacks on Teruel, at Belchite, opposite Saragossa and below Huesca.

Dec – Franco’s plan for renewed attack on Madrid abandoned.

Dec – Republicans take Teruel.

1938

Jan – International Brigades arrive at Teruel.

End of Jan – Nationalists re-take Teruel.

March to April – Franco’s offensive in Aragon cuts deep into the Republic.

May – Navarese troops reach the Mediterranean.

25 Jul to 16 Nov – Battle of the Ebro.

15 Nov – International Brigades disbanded and leave Spain. Aid from the USSR diminishes to a trickle. The Republican army confounds pessimists by its courage and endurance, but it cannot survive faced with overwhelming quantities of war machinery supplied by the fascist dictatorships.

1939

26 Jan – Yagüe enters Barcelona.

Feb 28 – British and French governments recognize Franco.

Negrin’s policy – to hold out until the inevitable European War forces Britain and France to come to the aid of the Republic.

Colonel Casado attempts to negotiate peace with Franco via the Madrid Fifth Column.

Casado’s coup d’etat against the Republican government of Negrin.

27 Mar – Madrid surrenders.

1940

April – Franco orders start of the construction of Valle de los Caidos

(Completed 30 Mar 1959). Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera re-interred.

Franco’s selfcongratulatory novel Raza made into a film by the state propaganda organisation.

1975

20 Nov – Franco dies.

23 Nov – State funeral. Franco interred in Valle de los Caidos.

Spain becomes a democratic monarchy.

Acknowledgements

In the mountains to the north of the Ebro valley and not far from the point on the river where the Fifteenth Brigade crossed, my wife and I met a young Englishwoman who was studying the history of the medical services in the Republican army. She asked me what started my interest in the Spanish Civil War, and I replied that my mother was a founder member of a group that raised money for the Spanish Republic. This was a true but simplified version of the truth, because I only discovered about the Popular Front many years later. There was not time to explain that my interest was kindled by my first sight of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, that I was six years old and that the war was entering its last and most tragic phase. As the ship approached France very early in the morning my mother took a small, and doubtless protesting child onto the deck to see the coast of Spain. Pedants assert that the experiences of a small child leave no memories, but I remember the cold wind on deck, the dull light where everything in sight was grey, from the sky to the greasy heavy swell of the grey Mediterranean, to the line of ships dark grey against the line of the coast so pale that one could only just discern it from the dawn sky. These long, low and menacing shapes were Mussolini’s fleet, blockading the ports of Republican Spain. The reason that I can place this event in historical time seventy years later is the Munich Crisis. My mother, my younger brother and I were on our way to Marseilles, to catch a night train to Paris and then to London. My father remained at his post in Cairo, convinced that the Second Word War would begin that summer. We returned to Egypt when the crisis appeared to be over, only to repeat the process in the summer of 1939. Like so many others my family remained split until 1944.

Marguerite Vernon Brunel Hawes was known to family and friends as Nancy. She was a remarkable woman. After she died I found amongst her papers a little cache of blank postcards with the heading ‘The Cairo-British Democratic Society’. Formed in the summer of 1936, this society was active in Egypt until the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939. It was part of the Popular Front Movement that raised money for medical supplies, blankets and tinned food, especially milk, for the refugees of the Spanish Republic. We know today, that the Frente Popular was largely controlled by the Communist International, but few of the Cairo society were communists. Most of my mother’s friends were liberals or socialists, but my auntie Mimi and auntie Margaret were staunch members of the Conservative Party who, like Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, had the good sense to see that Franco and his allies, Mussolini and Hitler, were the enemies of British interests in the Mediterranean. The Society had two communist members, the brother and sister Jack and Bertha Gaster. I kept in touch with Bertha until she was very old; she never lost her faith in the party. Like most people in the Popular Front movement my mother was broadly sympathetic with the communist method of fighting Franco, while having no sympathy with their methods of internal subversion. Her approach through the war in Spain was similar to Winston Churchill’s during the Second World War, that an alliance with Stalin against Hitler was the lesser of two evils.

Being active in the politics of the Left, before, during and immediately after the Second World War, my mother knew many who were connected with the war in Spain. These included Tom Wintringham, who was expelled from the CPGB in 1938 and formed the Common Wealth Party, to which Nancy belonged during its brief existence.

During the years between the two world wars, the courtesy title uncle or aunt was used by children when addressing friends of their parents. Two of my uncles, uncle Dougal Eggar and uncle George Rees, volunteered to fight with the Fifteenth Brigade against what they and my parents called the ‘fascists’. Dougal was taken prisoner on the Ebro, and survived one of Franco’s notorious camps near Burgos. He never fully recovered his health, yet lived to a good age. He remained a communist to the end. George and Dorothy Rees were both writers and socialists who detested Stalin as much as they did Hitler. They remained my mentors and friends and encouraged me to paint, write and make objects until they died during the 1960s.

Not the least of the influences that facilitated a youthful study of the war in Spain was the Oxford City Library, then part of the Town Hall in St Aldates. The library had a collection of books published in the 1930s, and evenly balanced to represent all the many strands of opinion concerned with that war. Oddly enough, the one book that I did not read during my time as a student (1949 to 1953) was George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. I want to thank the many librarians in Oxford, both in the City Library and in the Bodlean, who helped me, an ignorant youth, during the late 1940s, and recently, as an ancient, slightly less ignorant, student of the mid-twentieth century. My thanks to the staff of the Imperial War Museum, London for their assistance and advice over a period of many years and to the staff of the Museo Militar in Seville.

I first visited Spain in the 1950s as a student with little money. Spain was cheap but at the same time deeply depressing. The nearest area one could compare to Spain was North Africa, not only in the ruggedness and the grandeur of its landscape, but in the desperate and miserable poverty of its people. Recently I remarked to an English acquaintance that I loved travelling in Spain, and that it had become such a civilised country. He replied, ‘Ah yes, but it was better under Franco.’ I found out later that his wife was from a wealthy Spanish family, some of whom had been imprisoned under the Republic. No doubt Franco’s Spain was a fine place for the rich, although it was a very unpleasant place for the poor who made up the vast majority of its citizens, and almost impossible for the families of men who fought for the Republic.

I want to thank my cousin, Hugh Hawes in Seville, for his enthusiastic support and hospitality throughout this project. From the roof of his flat I can look down the Calle Trajano and think over the street’s dramatic history during the early days of the Golpe, and the rule of the despotic General.

Friends based in London who have been a great inspiration and help during the research period through to the last stages of this book are Irene Rado-Vajda, expert on Lorca and Granada, and Mike Dibb who, with Irene, made the excellent and moving film on the death of Lorca. My thanks to Mike’s partner, Cheli Duran, the daughter of the musician turned soldier Gustavo Duran. Being half Spanish and half American, Cheli spans both worlds, and her advice gave me an insight into both Spain and into North American involvement in Spain throughout the 1930s. I want to thank Dr Tom Buchanan of the University of Oxford for his advice on the role of the British in Spain through the Civil War. In references to all my advisers I must add that any mistakes in reporting the story are my own.

My sincere thanks to my dear wife Sylvie for tolerating my obsession with late nineteenth and twentieth century warfare, and for putting up with being dragged over muddy battlefields all over Europe, North Africa, and in the United States, and not least for her labours as proof-reader, computer-fixer and strict critic of the writing. Lastly, I want to thank those many men and women whose names I do not know: in Madrid, Malaga, Seville, Granada, Gandesa, Falset, Teruel, Morata de Tajuna, Biruega, Belchite, Saragossa and Barcelona: booksellers, teachers, inn-keepers, barmen, farmers, mechanics and casual labourers who, over the years and despite Franco’s Pact of Silence, gave me so much assistance in a way that helped me picture the Golpe and the Guerra Civil Espanola.

Steve Hurst.

Oxford, England.

January 2009.

Introduction

‘I had dinner one evening with Luis Quintanilla, the artist, and he told me Our United Front will sweep the country. Quintanilla had quite recovered from his stay in gaol, which had ended after eight months when the charge against him was withdrawn. He had, however, a slight contretemps since then as a result of a fervent fascist propagandist having thrust a leaflet at him rudely – so Luis said – In the café Negresco whereupon Quintanilla in his wrath seized one of the very solid glass water bottles of the establishment and broke it on the head of the unfortunate youth, who needed some stitches before he could go home again. So whenever I happened to take a morning constitutional walk in the lovely Parque del Oeste and dropped in to see how Quintanilla was getting on with his monument to the pioneer of Spanish socialism, Pablo Iglesias, I would see a revolver butt sticking out from amongst the brushes Luis used in painting his frescoes. He kept the gun handy in case any fascist might consider vengeance.’

From Henry Buckley’s Life and Death of the Spanish Republic

The Spanish Civil War has been described as the dress rehearsal for the Second World War and as the first twentieth Century war between ideologies. The first is true, but the second is not. The story of the two ideologies, Left against Right, reds versus whites is not accurate. Spain’s turbulent history from the guerrilla wars against Napoleon to the Carlist civil wars and the struggles within and against the monarchy caused a fracturing of society into many factions, not merely two.

Spain in the early nineteenth Century was unique amongst the nations of continental Europe in the failure of Napoleonic reforms to make any impression except on a tiny minority of liberal intellectuals. The victory of the traditionalists in the Carlist civil wars, in 1876, completed the frustration of attempts to change Spanish society. The country was not backward by chance but because the ruling class clung to a feudal ideal of churchman, landowner and knight and resisted change with a savagery born of total conviction. Those at the bottom of the feudal system became equally cruel and ruthless. Caught in the middle stood a coalition of liberals, socialists and separatists who believed in gradual reforms within a democratic system. They might have stood a chance of success had they been aided and given moral support by the European democracies, but the democracies turned their backs on Spain, and the ideals of democracy and freedom were destroyed by savage fanatics on both extremes. A crucial factor in forging the coalition of the Right was the alienation of the Spanish army from civil society. The collapse of the Spanish-American empire following defeat by the USA in 1898 not only impoverished Spain but led to the embitterment and isolation of the officer corps. Rapid promotion for an ambitious young officer could only be realised in North Africa. Thus the Africanistas became a close knit and ruthless group that would play a crucial role in the military rebellion that became known as the Golpe.

Up to 1931 Spain was a largely backward, repressive and rural society closer in spirit and appearance to North Africa than to the rest of Europe. Land ownership was that of large estates owned by rich absentee landlords whose land was administered by agents (or Caiques). The exceptions were three areas: Navarre, which for historical reasons was a province of small landholdings owned by independent, devout and conservative farmers, and the two secessionist regions, the Basque provinces and Catalonia. By coincidence each of these had its own language and the natural resources to create Spain’s industrial revolution. The Basque country was rich in iron, coal and other minerals. Its capital, Bilbao, developed iron-smelting, shipbuilding and precision engineering. On the other side of the country, but also bordering France, lay Catalonia, where textile factories, ship repair and general engineering flourished, particularly in Barcelona. The further south the traveller progressed the more backward a society he found, until he reached Andalucia and Estramadura, provinces of extreme poverty, ignorance and want. Here the peasants were controlled, exploited and humiliated by a three-part force composed of the great landowners through their Caiques, the Roman Catholic Church and the Civil Guard.

The response to this oppression was the growth of a secretive and violent form of anarchism. As impoverished Andalucians moved to Catalonia to work in the factories and textile mills they took their extreme organisation with them. This anarchist movement, growing in size and power as it moved north, based on the philosophy of Bakunin rather than Marx and Lenin, was named by the landowners and the Church as ‘communism’. In practice actual communism made little impression on the Spanish working class in pre-Civil War Spain. The Spanish Communist Party made no headway until, belatedly and grudgingly, Stalin began to supply the Spanish Republic with weapons.

The victory in 1931 by a Left coalition of liberal and left reformers and intellectuals combined with trades unions led in turn to a coalition of the Right which included traditionalists, the Spanish Roman Catholic Church, Royalists and their rivals the fascist revolutionaries known as the Falangists. Pressure applied by the Roman Catholic Church together with unprecedented sums spent on electioneering by the great landowners and bankers ensured the election of CEDA, a right-wing coalition who swept away or neutralised all the reforms carried out by the liberals and Left. This led to the impoverishment of workers all over the country, nowhere more that in the mines and iron and steel industries on the Atlantic coast. Many believe that it was the miners’ strike in the Asturias of 1934 and its brutal repression by Civil Guards and soldiers of the Army of Africa that led to the fragmentation of society and the civil war two years later, but in fact the causes lay much further back, in the very nature and the institutionalised injustice and inequality of Spanish society. In view of the myths spread by