Franco. Paul Preston
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a friend, was one of his prime targets.83
Azaña seems to have assumed that Franco’s presence at his post during the Sanjurjada meant that they were now totally reconciled. When the Prime Minister visited La Coruña from 17 to 22 September 1932, however, Franco made slight efforts to disabuse him of the idea. Franco, according to his own account, was no more than stiffly polite to the Prime Minister. In the course of a stay in Galicia during which he was received enthusiastically, Azaña made an effort to be friendly but Franco did not respond with any warmth.84 If indeed Franco set out to put distance between himself and the Prime Minister, Azaña seems not to have noticed.*
Franco’s account probably reflects his desire to wipe away the disagreeable memory of the time when he was Azaña’s subordinate. In fact, at this time, Franco was immensely careful.85 When Sanjurjo requested that he appear as his defender in his trial, he refused. His glacial coldness was revealed when he said to his one-time commander, ‘I could, in fact, defend you, but without hope of success. I think in justice that by rebelling and failing, you have earned the right to die’.86 Nor did he join the conspiratorial efforts which led eventually to the creation of the Unión Militar Española, the clandestine organization of monarchist officers founded by Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Rodríguez Tarduchy, a close friend of Sanjurjo, and Captain Bartolomé Barba Hernández, like Galarza an officer of the general staff. The UME emerged finally in late 1933 and was linked, through Galarza, to the activities of Ansaldo and Vigón.87
On 28 January 1933, the results of the revisión de ascensos were announced. Franco’s promotion to colonel was impugned, that to general validated. Goded’s promotions to brigadier and major-general were both annulled. However, they were not demoted but rather frozen in their present position in the seniority scale until a combination of vacancies arising and seniority permitted them to catch up with their accelerated promotions. So Franco kept his rank with effect from the date of his promotion in 1926. He nevertheless dropped from number one in the escalafón (list) of brigadier generals to 24, out of 36. Like most of his comrades, Franco smouldered with resentment at what was perceived as a gratuitous humiliation and nearly two years of unnecessary anxiety.88 Years later, he still wrote of promotions being ‘pillaged’ (despojo de ascensos) and of the injustice of the entire process.89
In February 1933, Azaña had him posted to the Balearic Islands as comandante general, ‘where he will be far from any temptations’.90 It was a post which would normally have gone to a Major-General and may well have formed part of Azaña’s efforts to attract Franco into the Republican orbit, rewarding him for his passivity during the Sanjurjada. After the preferments with which he had been showered by the King and Primo de Rivera, Franco did not perceive command of the Balearic Islands as a reward. In his draft memoirs, he wrote that it was less than his seniority merited (postergación).91 More than two weeks after the appointment, he had still not made the reglamentary visit to the Ministry of War to report on his impending move. The Socialist leader, Francisco Largo Caballero, told Azaña that Franco had been heard to boast that he would not go.92 Finally on 1 March, having been in Madrid for two days, he came to say his farewells to Azaña, in his capacity as Minister of War. The delay was a carefully calculated act of disrespect. Azaña perceived that Franco was still furious about the annulment of promotions but the subject did not arise, and they spoke merely of the situation in the Balearic Islands.93 The new military commander arrived at Palma de Mallorca on 16 March 1933, and with Mussolini’s ambitions heightening tension in the Mediterranean, dedicated himself to the job of improving the defences of the islands.
Throughout 1933, the fortunes of the Azaña government declined. By the beginning of September, the Republican-Socialist coalition was in tatters. Right-wing success in blocking reform had undermined the faith of the Socialists in Azaña’s Left Republicans. On 10 September, the increasingly conservative and power-hungry Lerroux began to put together an all-Republican cabinet. It was reported in ABC that he had offered Franco the job of Minister or undersecretary of War. Although he came from the Balearic Islands to Madrid for discussions with the Radical leader, Franco finally declined the offer.94 The post was one of those to which he aspired, but the Lerroux cabinet of 12 September was expected to last for no more than a couple of months since it could not command a parliamentary majority. Convinced that the only way to implement reform was to form a government on their own, the Socialists refused to rejoin a coalition with Azaña and it was widely assumed that President Alcalá Zamora would soon be forced to call general elections. In such conditions, taking over a ministry would have given Franco no opportunity to introduce the changes which he regarded as essential.
During the campaign for the November 1933 elections, with the possibility that the Socialists might win and establish a government bent on sweeping reform, Franco, although busy and fulfilled in the Balearics, was pessimistic about the prospects for the armed forces. He talked to friends of leaving the Army and going into politics. According to Arrarás, rumours to this effect reached rightist circles in Madrid and he was visited in Palma by a messenger from the increasingly powerful Catholic authoritarian party, the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-Wing Groups). The envoy allegedly offered Franco inclusion as a candidate in both the CEDA’s Madrid list and in another provincial list in order to guarantee his election. He refused outright.95 He did, however, vote for the CEDA in the elections.96 With the Left divided and the anarchists abstaining, a series of local alliances between the Radicals and the CEDA ensured their victory. The Radicals got 104 deputies and the CEDA 115 to the Socialists’ 58 and the Left Republicans’ 38. The subsequent period of government by a coalition of the ever-more corrupt Radicals and the CEDA would see Franco come in from the cold, as he perceived his comfortable exile in the Balearics, and much nearer to the centre of political preferment.
* This differs from the version given by Franco to his friend and biographer, Joaquín Arrarás. According to this version, Azaña said ‘I have re-read your extraordinary order to the cadets and I would like to believe that you did not think through what you wrote’, to which Franco claims to have replied, ‘Señor Ministro, I never write anything that I haven’t thought through beforehand’. Azaña’s version, written on the day, is altogether more plausible than that recounted by Franco six years later in the heat of the civil war. Joaquin Arrarás, Franco (Valladolid, 1937) p. 166.
* He later claimed that he had gone to great lengths not to be photographed with the Prime Minister, pointing out that his superior, Major General Vera, took priority. Franco also said that, by using the pretext that Doña Carmen was unwell, he had avoided being present at a morning reception given on Sunday 19 September by the La Coruña Sporting Club for Azaña and his friend and host, Santiago Casares Quiroga, the Minister of the Interior, and a prominent gallego. There exist photographs of them together during the visit to the city, next to each other and certainly with Franco nearer to Azaña than was General Vera. Similarly, the local press of the time reported Franco’s presence at Azaña’s table at a much more lavish occasion than the morning function, a dinner given that same evening at the Hotel Atlántida, in La Coruña and again at another lunch on Wednesday 21 September. See the photograph in Xosé