Franco. Paul Preston
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impending marriage, for which royal permission had finally been granted on 2 July.18
The thirty year-old Francisco Franco was married to the twenty-one year-old María del Carmen Polo in the Church of San Juan el Real in Oviedo at midday on Monday 22 October 1923. His fame and popularity as a hero of the African war ensured that substantial crowds of well-wishers and casual onlookers would gather round the church and on the pavements of the streets traversed by the wedding party. By 10.30 a.m., the Church was full and the crowd had spilled out and packed the surrounding streets. The police had difficulty maintaining the flow of local traffic. As befitted his position as a gentilhombre de cámara, Franco’s padrino (best man) was Alfonso XIII, by the proxy of the military governor of Oviedo. General Losada took Carmen’s arm and they entered the Church under the royal canopy (palio). That honour, combined with Franco’s growing reputation, was reflected in the fact that his marriage was reported in the society pages not only of local newspapers but also of the national press. A bemedalled Franco wore the field uniform of the Legion. The ceremony was carried out by a military chaplain while the organ played Franco’s choice of military marches. On leaving the church, the couple were greeted by wild cheering and applause. The crowd followed the cars back to the Polo house and continued to cheer.19 The marriage constituted a major social occasion in Oviedo, the centre-piece of which was a spectacular wedding banquet.20 Franco’s father, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo, was not present. As might have been expected, it was to be a solidly enduring, if not a passionate, marriage.* Five years later, Carmen would recall her wedding day, ‘I thought I was dreaming or reading a beautiful novel … about me’.21 Among the mountains of telegrams was a collective greeting from the married men of the Legion and another from a Legion battalion which welcomed Carmen as their new mother.22
The social position of both bride and groom was reflected in the fact that those who signed the marriage certificate as witnesses included two local aristocrats, the Marqués de la Rodriga and the Marqués de la Vega de Anzó. The unctuous tone of local reporting not only gives an indication of the prestige that Franco already enjoyed but it also reflects the kind of adulation with which he was bombarded. ‘Yesterday, Oviedo enjoyed moments of intimate and longed-for satisfaction and of jubilant delight. It was the wedding of Franco, the brave and popular head of the Legion. If the desire of the couple to see their love blessed before the altar was great, the interest of the public was no less immense on seeing them happy with their dream of love come true. In this pure love, all of us who know Franco and Carmina have given something of their own hearts and have suffered with them their worries, their anguish, their justified impatience. From the King down to the last of the hero’s admirers there was a unanimous desire that this love, so beset by ill-luck, should have the divine sanction which would lead them to the supreme happiness.’23 ‘The pause in the struggle of the brave Spanish warrior has had its triumphant apotheosis. Those polite and gallant phrases whispered by the noble soldier in the ear of his beautiful beloved have had the divine epilogue of their consecration.’24 One journal in Madrid headed its commentary with the headline ‘The Wedding of an heroic Caudillo’ (warrior-leader).25 This was one of the first ever public uses of the term Caudillo with respect to Franco. It can easily be imagined how such adulatory prose moulded Franco’s perception of his own importance.
By tradition, on marrying, a senior officer was required to ‘kiss the hands’ of the King. After a few days honeymoon spent at the Polo summer house, La Piniella near San Cucao de Llanera outside Oviedo, and prior to setting up home in Ceuta, the newly weds travelled to Madrid and called at the royal palace in late October. In 1963, the Queen recalled lunch with a silent and timid young officer.26
In later years, Franco himself twice recounted the interview with the King to his cousin and also to George Hills. Franco alleged in these accounts that the King was anxious to know how the Army in Africa felt about the recent coup and the military situation in Morocco. Franco claimed to have told the King that the Army was doubtful about Primo because of his belief in the need to abandon the protectorate. When the King demonstrated an equally pessimistic inclination to pull out, Franco boldly replied with his opinion that the ‘rebels’ (the local inhabitants) could be defeated and the Spanish protectorate consolidated. He allegedly pointed out that, so far, Spanish operations had been piecemeal, pushing back the Moors from one small piece of ground after another, attempting to hold it, and to retake it after it had been recaptured. Rather than this endless drain on men and materials, Franco suggested an idea long favoured by Africanistas, a major attack on the headquarters of Abd el Krim in the region of the Beni Urriaquel tribe. The most direct route was by sea to the Bay of Alhucemas.
The King arranged for Franco to dine with General Primo de Rivera and tell him of his plan.27 Primo was hardly likely to be sympathetic given both his long-standing conviction that Spain should withdraw from Morocco and his determination, as Dictator, to reduce military expenditure.28 When he met Franco, Primo would almost certainly not have been surprised to hear that the young Lieutenant-Colonel shared the commitment of the Africanistas to remaining in Morocco. Franco had long since published his variant of the view that Spain’s Moroccan problem would be solved at Alhucemas, ‘the heart of anti-Spanish rebellion, the road to Fez, the short exit to the Mediterranean, and there is to be found the key to much propaganda which will end the day that we set foot on that coast.’29 The idea of a landing at Alhucemas had been in the air for some years and the general staff had prepared detailed contingency plans in the event of the politicians giving the go-ahead. According to his own account, by the time Franco managed to put his case for a landing to the Dictator, it was in the early hours of the morning. The anything but abstemious Primo was somewhat merry, and Franco was convinced that he would never remember their conversation. Nevertheless, Primo suggested that he submit his scheme in written form.
In this subsequent version of events, Franco’s narrative is tailored to show that the plan for the Alhucemas landing was his own. That he should remember it as his own brainchild was entirely understandable after years of being told so by sycophants and given the fact that he did play a prominent role in putting the case against withdrawal from Morocco.30 At the beginning of 1924, he had been one of the founders, along with General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, of a journal called Revista de Tropas Coloniales which advocated that Spain maintain its colonial presence in Africa. At the start of 1925, he would become head of its editorial board. Franco was to write more than forty articles for the journal. In one published in April 1924, entitled ‘passivity and inaction’, he argued that the weakness of Spanish policy, ‘the parody of a protectorate’, was encouraging rebellion among the indigenous tribes.31 It made a considerable impact.
Shortly after visiting the King, the newly wed Franco and his bride took up residence in Ceuta. The situation in Morocco seemed ominously quiet. In fact, by the spring of 1924, Abd el Krim’s power had grown enormously and he no longer recognized the authority of the Sultan. He was presenting himself as the figurehead of a vaguely nationalistic Berber movement and talking in terms of establishing an independent socialist state. Numerous tribes accepted his leadership and, under his self-bestowed title of ‘Emir of the Rif’, in 1924, he formally requested membership of the League of Nations.32 After the defeat of Annual, the Spanish counter-offensive had recaptured an area around Melilla. Apart from that, the Spanish foothold consisted only of the towns of Ceuta, Tetuán,