Franco. Paul Preston
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gallons of ink trying to explain away this letter either as a skilful effort by Franco the conspirator to put Casares off the scent and make him halt his efforts to replace subversives with loyal Republicans or else as a prudent warning by Franco the loyal officer which was stupidly ignored by the Minister of War.41 In fact, the letter had exactly the same purpose as Franco’s appeals to Portela in mid-February. Franco was ready to deal with revolutionary disorder as he had done in Asturias in 1934 and was now, in guarded terms, offering his services. If Casares had accepted his offer, there would have been no need for an uprising.
That was certainly Franco’s retrospective view.42 The government of the Popular Front did not share his commitment to suppressing the aspirations of the masses. In any case, Casares took no notice of him. If he had, the eventual outcome would certainly have been very different. If Franco was within his rights to send such a letter, Casares should have acknowledged his concern. If he believed that Franco had abused his position then Casares should have taken disciplinary measures against him. The Prime Minister’s failure to reply can only have helped to incline Franco towards rebellion.
Franco’s letter was a typical example of his ineffable self-regard, his conviction that he was entitled to speak for the entire army. At the same time, its convoluted prose reflected his retranca, the impenetrable cunning associated with the peasants of Galicia. At the time of writing, Franco was still distancing himself from the conspirators. His determination to be on the winning side without taking any substantial risks hardly set him apart as a likely charismatic leader although it did prefigure his behaviour towards the Axis in the Second World War. At the same time as he wrote to Casares, Franco also wrote to two Army colleagues. The first letter was to Colonel Miguel Campins, his assistant in the Zaragoza Academy, currently in command of a light infantry battalion in Catalonia. The other was to Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno, chief of the general staff of Spanish forces in Morocco with whom Franco had worked in early 1935 when he had been Commander-in-Chief there. The letters suggest clearly that Franco was not yet a committed conspirator, expressing merely his anxiety that the political situation might worsen to the point at which the Army would have to intervene. He asked if they would collaborate with him if such an occasion were to arise. Martín Moreno wrote back to say that, if Franco appeared in Tetuán, he would place himself at his orders, ‘but at no one else’s’. Campins, in contrast, replied that he was loyal to the government and to the Republic and that he did not favour any intervention by the Army. He had signed his own death warrant.43
A few days after Franco wrote his letter to Casares, the division of duties among the conspirators was settled. Franco was expected to be in command of the rising in Morocco. Cabanellas would be in charge in Zaragoza, Mola in Navarre and Burgos, Saliquet in Valladolid, Villegas in Madrid, González Carrasco in Burgos, Goded in Valencia. Goded insisted on exchanging cities with González Carrasco.44 For several reasons, Mola and the other conspirators were loath to proceed without Franco. His influence within the officer corps was enormous, having been both Director of the Military Academy and Chief of the General Staff. He also enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of the Spanish Moroccan Army. The coup had little chance of succeeding without the Moroccan Army and Franco was the obvious man to lead it. Yet, in the early summer of 1936, Franco still preferred to wait in the wings. Calvo Sotelo frequently cornered Serrano Suñer in the corridors of the Cortes to badger him impatiently ‘what is your brother-in-law thinking about? What is he doing? Doesn’t he realize what is on the cards?’45
His coy hesitations saw his exasperated comrades bestow upon him the ironic nickname of ‘Miss Canary Islands 1936’. Sanjurjo, still bitter about Franco’s failure to join him in 1932, commented that ‘Franco will do nothing to commit himself; he will always be in the shadows, because he is crafty’ (cuco). He was also heard to say that the rising would go ahead ‘with or without Franquito’.46 There were plenty of other good generals who were in on the conspiracy and many more who were not. Why Franco’s hesitations infuriated Mola and Sanjurjo was not just because of the danger and inconvenience involved in having to plan around a doubtful element. They were anxious to have him aboard because they rightly sensed that his decision would clinch the involvement of many others. He was ‘the traffic light of military politics’, in the words of José María Pemán.*47
When Franco did eventually commit himself, his role was of the first importance without being the crucial one. The Head of State after the coup triumphed was to be Sanjurjo. As technical master-mind of the plot, Mola was then expected to have a decisive role in the politics of the victorious regime. Then came a number of generals each of whom was assigned a region, among them Franco with Morocco. Several of them were of equal prominence to Franco, especially Fanjul in Madrid and Goded in Barcelona. Moreover, leaving aside the roles allotted to Sanjurjo and Mola, Franco’s future in the post-coup polity could only lie in the shadow of the two charismatic politicians of the extreme Right, José Calvo Sotelo and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. In fact, given his essential caution, Franco seems not to have nurtured high-flying ambitions in the spring and early summer of 1936. When Sanjurjo asked what prizes his fellow-conspirators aspired to, Franco had opted for the job of High Commissioner in Morocco.48 As the situation changed, Franco would adjust his ambitions with remarkable agility and uninhibited by any self-doubts. The hierarchy of the plotters would in fact soon be altered with astonishing rapidity.
The arrangements for Franco’s part in the coup were first mooted in Mola’s Directive for Morocco. Colonel Yagüe was to head the rebel forces in Morocco until the arrival of ‘a prestigious general’. To ensure that this would be Franco, Yagüe wrote urging him to join in the rising. He also planned with the CEDA deputy Francisco Herrera to present Franco with a fait accompli by sending an aircraft to take him on the 1,200 kilometre journey from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Francisco Herrera, a close friend of Gil Robles, was the liaison between the conspirators in Spain and those in Morocco. Yagüe, for his part, was devoted to Franco. As a consequence of his clashes with General López Ochoa during the Asturian campaign, he had been transferred to the First Infantry Regiment in Madrid. A personal intervention by Franco had got him back to Ceuta.49 After meeting Yagüe on 29 June in Ceuta, Herrera undertook the lengthy journey to Pamplona where he arrived somewhat the worse for wear on 1 July to make arrangements for an aircraft for Franco. Apart from the financial and technical difficulties of getting an aircraft at short notice, Mola still had grave doubts about whether Franco would join the rising.
However, after consulting with Kindelán, he gave the go-ahead for this plan on 3 July. Herrera proposed going to Biarritz to see if the exiled Spanish monarchists at the resort could resolve the money problem. On 4 July, he spoke to the millionaire businessman Juan March who had got to know Franco in the Balearic Islands in 1933. He agreed to put up the cash. Herrera then got in touch with the Marqués de Luca de Tena, owner of the newspaper ABC, to get his assistance. March gave Luca de Tena a blank cheque and he set off for Paris to make the arrangements. Once there on 5 July, Luca de Tena rang Luis Bolín, the ABC correspondent in England, and instructed him to charter a seaplane capable of flying direct from the Canary Islands to Morocco or else the best possible conventional aircraft. Bolín in turn rang the Spanish aeronautical inventor and rightist, Juan de la Cierva who lived in London. La Cierva flew to Paris and told Luca de Tena that there was no suitable seaplane and recommended instead a De Havilland Dragon Rapide. Knowing the English private aviation world well, La Cierva recommended using Olley Air Services of Croydon. Bolín went to Croydon on 6 July and hired a Dragon Rapide.*50
La Cierva and Bolín arranged