The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston
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the East, vast quantities of food and equipment were left in the Catalan capital and fell into the hands of the Francoists when they entered the city in the afternoon of 26 January.37 The military retreat, now swelled by 450,000 civilians, continued to the French frontier and on to the unhealthy internment camps of France’s windswept southern beaches. Among the Republican authorities that fled before the advancing Francoists, only Negrín and his ministers and the Communists had the courage to return to the remaining Republican territory. There too, from the Republic’s eastern frontier in Badajoz to the Mediterranean coast in Valencia and Murcia, there were shortages of basic necessities and weaponry, intense demoralization and dread of what was seen as inevitable defeat. The loss of Catalonia and the consequent isolation of the central zone provoked widespread fear. This was reflected in bitter divisions between the Communists and other parties and within the Socialist Party.38
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As has already been noted, there have been claims that the Communists were plotting to end the war long before the fall of Catalonia.1 In fact, as late as 26 January 1939, the Comintern was urging the Communist leadership in Britain, France and the USA to organize demonstrations to push their respective governments into lifting the blockade on arms for Spain and to make arrangements for the accommodation of refugees. The French party was told to recruit volunteers for Spain and to send a delegation to Catalonia to counteract capitulationism in the Republican and Socialist parties. A message was sent via the French urging the Spanish Communists to hold on. Even after news had reached Moscow of the fall of Barcelona, the head of the Communist International, Georgi Dimitrov, stood by his instructions to the Spanish Communists to fight on. On 7 February, Dimitrov sent a further message to the PCE: ‘the course of resistance must be maintained … the front in Levante must be activated; capitulation by the Spanish government must be prevented, through replacing adherents of capitulation in the government with staunch adherents of resistance’. On the same day, he ordered Maurice Thorez, leader of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), to organize demonstrations to pressurize the French government into permitting the dispatch of the Army of Catalonia back to the central zone. The PCF was instructed to organize the supply of arms and food to Valencia and to look after the welfare and morale of the Spanish refugees in France.2
Meanwhile, in Madrid, all these efforts were undermined by the activities of an ever more active rebel Fifth Column. Its success derived from the ease with which it was able to feed on the growing anti-communism. This was a reflection of the fact that the PCE was totally identified with government policy and therefore held responsible for the widespread hardship in the beleaguered city. The Fifth Column was also able to exploit the bitter resentment of the victims of PCE security policy since late 1936. In their efforts to impose a centralized war effort, the Communists had been ruthless in their suppression of anarchists and Trotskyists who had wanted to pursue a revolutionary line.3 Defeatism was rife. The intense anti-Communist hostility from the leadership of the CNT was matched within much of the Socialist Party. Relations between career officers and the Communist hierarchy had cooled. In an effort to improve the situation, at some point in October the leader of the Communist youth movement (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas, or JSU), Santiago Carrillo, had lunch at Casado’s headquarters. Casado had a reputation as a thoroughly humourless and sour individual, his constant irritability the consequence of the acute stomach pains he suffered as a result of ulcers. Knowing this and fully apprised of the rumours about Casado’s conspiratorial activities, Carrillo was surprised at the lunch by the effusiveness of Casado’s assertion that he shared Negrín’s determination to maintain resistance. Carrillo had been informed that his father, Wenceslao, a life-long friend of Largo Caballero, was actively engaged in seeking support within the PSOE for an anti-Negrín peace initiative. Shortly afterwards, in an acrimonious meeting, Santiago tried in vain to convince his father that such an action would leave tens of thousands of Republicans at the mercy of Francoist terror.4
The isolation of the central zone signified a logistical nightmare. There was no fuel for domestic heating or cooking, and no hot water. Medicines and surgical dressings were in dangerously short supply. The exiguous scale of rations in Madrid was insufficient, according to a report by the Quaker International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees, to sustain life for more than two or three months. The standard ration consisted of 2 ounces (55 grams) of lentils, beans or rice with occasional additions of sugar or salted cod. It was said that more than 400 people died of inanition each week in Madrid. A growing food crisis intensified a popular sense that Negrín’s government, located in Barcelona, had simply abandoned the centre to its fate. This was unfair, since the food situation in the Catalan capital was little better. In the central zone, Negrín’s rhetoric of resistance was increasingly out of tune with popular feeling.5 In November, when the Francoists bombed Madrid with loaves of fresh white bread, JSU militants denounced this as an insulting gesture and burned the loaves in street bonfires. Álvaro Delgado, a student at the time, told the British historian Ronald Fraser: ‘It came down in sacks with propaganda wrapped round it saying: “This bread is being sent you by your nationalist brothers.” It was beautiful, fine white bread. Some came through a broken skylight at the Fine Arts school, and when no one was around I and other students ate so much we felt sick.’ On the streets, others trampled the bread in a fury. Despite their hunger, people were shouting: ‘Don’t pick it up.’ Even Casado recalled later that women with children launched themselves on to some men who were seen picking up the bread. They then collected the loaves and took them to the Dirección General de Seguridad, the national police headquarters, whence it was transported to the battlefront and handed back to the Francoists.6
Discontent was stoked up by the Fifth Column which talked of the plentiful food in the Francoist-held areas and also of the likely mercy of Franco for those who were not Communists. War-weariness boosted the growth of the Fifth Column. David Jato, a significant Falangist militia leader, told Ronald Fraser: ‘I wouldn’t say we had people inside Casado’s general staff; I’d say the majority of the staff was willing to help us. So many doctors joined that Madrid’s health services were virtually in our hands. The recruiting centres were infiltrated by our men. Even some Communist organizations like Socorro Rojo ended up in fifth column hands.’7 The Socorro Rojo Internacional (International Red Aid) was a social welfare body.
In the wake of the Francoist advance through Aragon, dissident elements of the PSOE and the UGT had met with members of the CNT to discuss their discontent with Communist policy as early as April 1938. In mid-November 1938, anti-Negrinista Socialist officials in Alicante, Elche and Novelda and CNT elements in Madrid and Guadalajara had participated in a rehearsal of their efforts to oust Negrín. These initiatives were nipped in the bud by the SIM.8 The JSU organizations of Valencia, Alicante, Albacete, Murcia, Jaen and Ciudad Real were in favour of breaking Communist domination of the organization and re-establishing the Socialist Youth Federation (Federación de Juventudes Socialistas, or FJS) as it was before the unification with the Communist youth movement in 1936. The knee-jerk, and futile, response of the JSU secretary general, Santiago Carrillo, was to denounce the dissidents as Trotskyists. His alarm was understandable since JSU members made up a high proportion of the Republican armed forces.9
A combination of the Republic’s worsening situation, the consequent divisions within the Socialist Party and his conversations with Luna García convinced Besteiro that he was far from alone in his anti-communism. Aware of his own popularity, he had reached the conclusion that the time had come to emerge from his self-imposed obscurity in Madrid. At the PSOE executive committee meeting held in Barcelona on 15 November, Besteiro’s speech, which at time strayed into rhetoric indistinguishable