The Last Days of the Spanish Republic. Paul Preston
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instructing me to let you know that you must come here to Toulouse to arrange your return to Spain.’28 The publication of Zugazagoitia’s book with its account of Negrín’s call for Méndez to notarize the refusal of Rojo and Jurado to return to Spain ensured for him Rojo’s enduring resentment.29
In ¡Alerta los pueblos!, Rojo claimed that he and Negrín had parted amicably and that he had remained in France ‘to finish my task’. His vain hope had been to see the French implement promises to allow the refugee troops and their equipment to return to Spain. He went on to describe the calamitous situation of the thousands of Republican soldiers now in improvised, overcrowded and insanitary concentration camps on the beaches of southern France. The Republicans herded there lacked adequate shelter, food, clean water and basic medical provision. His distress at what he saw impelled him to write to Negrín on 12 February a bitter letter of complaint and protest. In it, he expressed his disgust that, while plans had been made for the evacuation of President Azaña, the President of the Cortes, the Basque and Catalan governments, parliamentary deputies and large numbers of functionaries, nothing had been done to plan for the evacuation of ordinary citizens. He was appalled by the camps, ‘where today hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees and tens of thousands of soldiers, including middle- and high-ranking officers, are perishing’. He was outraged by evidence that Republican functionaries were simply not doing their job – a point reiterated in many of the memoirs of the period.30
Rojo’s letter of 12 February reflected his obsession with the plight of the refugees in the camps and the way the French authorities pursued and humiliated those who had managed to avoid internment. He reproached Negrín for not having accepted his advice to surrender in Catalonia before the present situation arose. The letter underlined his refusal to return to Spain and his determination to continue working on behalf of the exiled troops: ‘I have not returned because I have no wish to be part of the second disaster to which the Government will almost certainly condemn our army and our people. I have stayed here believing that it is necessary that someone look out for the fate of our men. I was right to fear that we would be abandoned.’ He went on to make several demands of the Prime Minister. He began by asking that Negrín accept ‘the total and absolute renunciation of my post’. He went on to make suggestions that he believed would avoid a humanitarian catastrophe: that a government minister be sent to take charge of the refugee situation; that, in the interim, the Ambassador Marcelino Pascua be required to come to Perpignan; and that more funds be made available. Finally, he threatened that, if these demands were not met, he would deal directly with Franco to arrange the repatriation of the refugees and would publicize the situation, threatening to take ‘serious decisions if something was not done to improve the state of affairs’. He did not implement his threat, he said in the book, so as not to make things worse. The letter bore an olive branch for Negrín: ‘Perhaps among those whom I accuse of being responsible for this dereliction of duty, you are not the only exception because I am aware of your constant preoccupation, your sleepless nights, your integrity and I know how you have had to fight, along with a handful of ministers, against the insuperable fear that had invaded every level of the higher reaches of the State.’31
General Rojo wrote with some pride of the retreat: the army ‘had carried out a methodical withdrawal … it had held off the enemy, continuing to fight throughout, without letting the weakening of morale open the way to collective indiscipline or panic, without the demoralization spreading through its rearguard, and crossing into the neighbouring country in good order led by its officers’. The Minister of Culture in the Catalan Generalitat, Carles Pi Sunyer, wrote: ‘It is only fair to underline in honour of both Negrín and the army that it retreated in good order and with strict discipline without the epic grandeur of the withdrawal being stained by any explosion of vengeful violence.’32
Just before he entered France on 9 February, Negrín had said to the faithful group that accompanied him: ‘Let us hope that we achieve the same success with the second part of the task.’ The ‘first part’ was the evacuation of Catalonia; the ‘second part’ would be the evacuation of the centre-south zone. As Zugazagoitia commented, although Negrín’s public declarations spoke of resistance, ‘nobody knew better than he did how meaningless the slogan was’.33 In this regard, his arrangements to transfer the financial resources of the Republic to France were a crucial part of his plans for evacuation. Rojo’s accusation that no plans had been made was unjust, although it was certainly true that the scale and speed of the final debacle had not been, indeed could hardly have been, anticipated. After the defeat at the Ebro, Negrín had already begun to prepare for the likely Francoist triumph and the need to organize the evacuation, and subsequent support, of many thousands of Republicans. He had instructed the Minister of Finance, Francisco Méndez Aspe, and the most trusted officials of his Ministry, Jerónimo Bugeda, José Prat and Rafael Méndez, to draw up lists of the assets still in the hands of the government. He instructed Méndez Aspe to recover where possible the assets that the Republic had deposited in its offices in Czechoslovakia, the USA, Mexico, France and Britain to pay for arms, munitions, food, medical supplies and raw materials. His task included arranging for goods that had been bought but still not delivered to be converted into cash. Most of the jewels, gold and silver plate, stock and bond holdings of wealthy persons who had left Spain during the war, together with many art works belonging to the Church, had been confiscated by the Caja de Reparaciones and used to buy arms and supplies for the Republic. Since the autumn of 1938, truckloads of the remaining valuables had been brought to Figueras and nearby frontier towns.34
While still in Figueras, Negrín ordered that what remained should be packed and transported to France. He arranged with the French authorities that two sealed trucks laden with 110 boxes of these valuables be permitted to cross the frontier without examination by customs. The trucks went first to the Republican Embassy in Paris and then on to Le Havre where they would be loaded on to a vessel. This was a yacht, originally named Giralda, that had been bought by the Republican government via intermediaries from the former king Alfonso XIII and renamed Vita. In March, with the permission of the French Minister of the Interior Albert Sarrault, the Servicio de Evacuación de los Refugiados Españoles (SERE) was created in Paris, under the protection of the Mexican Embassy and the chairmanship of Pablo Azcárate. The valuables which were intended to constitute its funds were embarked for Mexico on the Vita on or about 10 March. There, in complicated circumstances, they fell into the hands of Indalecio Prieto. The subsequent fate of these funds would be a toxic issue within exile politics.35
Enrique Castro Delgado recounted a meeting with Rojo at this time. Allegedly, Rojo told him that Negrín had ordered him to return to Spain. When Castro asked him if he would go, Rojo replied: ‘No, there are hundreds of thousands of men here needing our help.’ When a shocked Castro asked if there were not also hundreds of thousands inside Spain who needed help, Rojo replied, ‘There’s nothing to be done there … it’s the inevitable death agony that will be followed by the terrible death of an era, the death of a regime, the death of the hope of millions of people.’36 So committed was Rojo to remaining in France that, in his book, he revealed his indignation that Tagüeña, Líster and the chief of his general staff, López Iglesias, the under-secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Colonel Antonio Cordón, the chief of the Republican air force Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros and other Communist officers and commissars had returned to Spain without seeking his permission.37
The armies defeated in Catalonia had a strong element of Communists and officers and men who had come through the militias. In contrast, the armies of the centre-south zone had a far higher proportion of career officers, a significant minority of whom were of doubtful loyalty to the Republic. Themselves often under surveillance, they had sought desk jobs behind the lines in training schools and the general staff. They had often provided money, safe-conducts and other documentation