Franco. Paul Preston
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of its citizens, it would be criminal in any age and in any situation for those who wear a uniform to use those arms against the nation or against the state which gave us them. The discipline of the Army, its very existence and the health of the state demand of us soldiers the bitter disappointments of having to apply a rigid law’.56 Although carefully ringed around by declarations of respect for parliamentary sovereignty, it was implicitly a statement that he regarded the defence of the monarchy by the Army in December 1930 to have been legitimate, a view contrary to those held by many in authority in the Republic. His views on the canonization of the Jaca rebels could also easily be deduced from the statement. However, in its implications about a disciplined acceptance of the Republic, his statement was entirely consistent with both his order of the day on 15 April and his farewell speech at the Academy. It may therefore be taken as further evidence that, unlike hotheads such as Orgaz, he was still far from turning his discontent into active rebellion. After a protracted ordeal, both Berenguer and Fernández de Heredia were found innocent by the Tribunal Supremo in 1935.57
Franco’s obscure declarations of disciplined loyalty were some distance from the enthusiastic commitment which might have gained him official favour. After the loss of the Academy, the questioning of his promotions, and the working class unrest highlighted by the right-wing press, Franco’s attitude to the Republic could hardly be other than one of suspicion and hostility. It is not surprising that he had to wait some considerable time before he got a posting, but it was an indication both of his professional merits and of Azaña’s recognition of them that, on 5 February 1932, he was posted to La Coruña as Commander of the XV Brigada de Infantería de Galicia, where he arrived at the end of the month. The local press greeted his arrival with the headline ‘A Caudillo of the Tercio’ and praised not only his bravery and military skill but also ‘his noble gifts as a correct and dignified gentleman’. He again took Pacón with him as his ADC. He was delighted to be in La Coruña, near to his mother, whom he visited every weekend.58
That Azaña believed that he was treating Franco well may be deduced from the fact that the posting saved the young general from the consequences of a decree published in March 1932 establishing the obligatory retirement of those who had spent more than six months without a posting. The appointment came only a few days before the end of the period after which Franco would have had to go into the reserve and he must have suffered considerable anxiety during the months of waiting. Azaña had deliberately kept him in a state of limbo as a punishment for the farewell speech to the Military Academy and to tame the arrogance of the soldier seen as the golden boy of the monarchy.59 In fact, by the point at which he posted Franco to La Coruña, Azaña seems to have decided that he had learned his lesson and might now be recruited to the new regime. Knowing Ramón Franco well, Azaña seemed again to be judging his older brother in the same terms. If that was so, it reflected an under-estimate of Franco’s capacity for resentment. Rather than reacting with gratitude and loyalty as Azaña had hoped, Franco harboured a grudge against him for the rest of his life.
Before their next meeting seven months later, a major crisis in civilian-military relations had occurred, and been resolved. It took the form of a military uprising in August 1932, the origins of which went back to the end of 1931. At that time, in the course of an otherwise peaceful general strike of landworkers in the province of Badajoz in Extremadura, there was bloodshed involving the Civil Guard in Castilblanco, a remote village in the heart of the arid zone known as the Siberia extremeña. Like most of the area, Castilblanco suffered high unemployment. On 30 and 31 December, the workers of the village held peaceful demonstrations. As they were dispersing to their homes, the alcalde (mayor) panicked and instructed the local four-man Civil Guard unit to intervene to break up the crowd. After some scuffling, a Civil Guard opened fire killing one man and wounding two others. In response, the villagers set upon the four guards, beating them to death with stones and knives.60 There was an outcry in the right-wing press and the Republican-Socialist government headed by Azaña was accused of inciting the landless labourers against the Civil Guard. Sanjurjo visited Castilblanco, in his capacity as Director-General of the Civil Guard, and blamed the outrage on the extreme leftist Socialist deputy for Badajoz, Margarita Nelken. In a revealing association of the working class and the Moors, he declared that during the collapse of Melilla, even at Monte Arruit, he had not seen similar atrocities. He also demanded justice for the Civil Guard.61 It was part of a process whereby the military was being convinced that the Republic signified disorder and anarchy. No issue was more indicative of the social abyss which divided Spain. For the Right, the Civil Guard was the beloved benemérita, the guardian of the social order; for the Left, it was a brutal and irresponsible Army of occupation at the service of the rich.
While the country was still reeling from the horror of Castilblanco, there occurred another tragedy. In the village of Arnedo in the province of Logroño in northern Castile, some of the employees of the local shoe factory had been sacked for belonging to the socialist trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores. During a protest meeting, the Civil Guard, with no apparent provocation, opened fire killing four women, a child and a worker as well as wounding thirty other by-standers, some of whom died in the course of the next few days. In the light of the remarks made by General Sanjurjo after Castilblanco, it was difficult for the incident not to be seen as an act of revenge.62 Azaña reluctantly bowed to pressure in the left-wing press and by left-wing deputies in the Cortes to remove Sanjurjo from the command of the Civil Guard and transfer him to the less important post of head of the Carabineros, the frontier and customs police.63 On 5 February 1932, in the batch of postings which sent Franco to Galicia, Sanjurjo was replaced as Director of the Civil Guard by General Miguel Cabanellas.64
Under any circumstances, Sanjurjo would have objected to losing the post of Director-General of the Civil Guard. In the context of the leftist campaign against him, his removal was interpreted by the right-wing press, and by himself, as an outrage and a further blow in favour of anarchy. Many on the Right began to see Sanjurjo as a possible saviour and encouraged him to think about overthrowing the Republic. The Castilblanco and Arnedo incidents had wiped away Sanjurjo’s original sin in the eyes of the extreme Right, his failure to act on behalf of the monarchy in April 1931. Now he was seen as the most likely guarantor of law and order, something which was transmuted in rightist propaganda into the defence of ‘the eternal essences of Spain’. Throughout 1932, as the agrarian reform statute and the Catalan autonomy statute painfully passed through the Cortes, the Right would grow ever more furious at what it perceived as assaults on property rights and national unity. Across Spain, petitions in favour of Sanjurjo were signed by many Army officers, although not by Franco. Several efforts were made to push Sanjurjo towards a coup d’état and he began to plot against the Republic.
General Emilio Barrera informed the Italian Ambassador Ercole Durini di Monzo in February that a movement to ‘oppose bolshevism and restore order’ could count on widespread military support including that of Generals Goded and Sanjurjo.65 Lerroux, who was determined to see Azaña’s Left Republican-Socialist coalition evicted from power, was in contact with Sanjurjo. They were united in resenting the presence of the Socialists in the government and talked about a possible coup.66 Any military conspiracy would have benefited enormously from the participation of Franco. However, he kept his distance out of innate caution when faced with an ill-prepared and highly questionable coup attempt. He distrusted Sanjurjo and had no reason to risk everything when he could continue to exercise his chosen profession within the Republic.
Franco was anxious not to jeopardize his new found comforts. Despite his proven capacity to put up with physical discomfort and to work hard in the most difficult conditions, Franco always enjoyed physical comfort when it was