Franco. Paul Preston
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Ramsay (Peebles) believed Franco to be ‘fighting the cause of Christianity against anti-Christ’. They and many others used their influence with banks and government to incline British policy towards the Nationalists’ interests.56
On 1 October 1936, the investiture of the new Chief of State took place. The pomp and the ceremony that were mounted were a long way from the improvisation of Franco’s first days as a military rebel barely ten weeks ago. A large guard of honour consisting of soldiers as well as Falangist and Carlist militias awaited his arrival in front of the Capitanía General of Burgos. An enormous and delirious crowd erupted into applause and cheers when his motor car entered the square in front of military headquarters. In the throne room, in the presence of the diplomats of Italy, Germany and Portugal, Cabanellas formally handed over the powers of the Junta de Defensa to a visibly delighted Franco. An anything but impressive figure, short, balding and now with an incipient double chin and paunch, Franco stood apart on a raised dais. Cabanellas said ‘Head of the Government of the Spanish State: in the name of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, I hand over to you the absolute powers of the State.’
Franco’s reply was shot through with hauteur, regal self-confidence and easily assumed authority: ‘General, Generals and Officers of the Junta, You can be proud, you received a broken Spain and you now deliver up to me a Spain united in a unanimous and grandiose ideal. Victory is on our side. You give me Spain and I assure you that the steadiness of my hand will not waver and will always be firm.’ After the ceremony, he appeared on the balcony and made a speech to the sea of arms raised in the fascist salute. The grandiloquent tone of his words in the throne room was replaced by a rhetorical commitment to social reform which can only have reflected a desire to be in tune with his Nazi and Fascist sponsors. Its cynical promises were to remain long unfulfilled: ‘Our work requires sacrifices from everyone, principally from those who have more in the interests of those who have nothing. We will ensure that there is no home without light or a Spaniard without bread.’ Altogether more credible was his declaration that night on Radio Castilla to the effect that he planned a totalitarian State for Spain.57
Thereafter, from his very first decree, Franco simply referred to himself as Jefe del Estado. At that stage, of course, there was not much in the way of a State for Franco to be Head of. The task of constructing it began immediately, although with little immediate success. The Junta de Burgos was dissolved and replaced by a Junta Técnica del Estado, presided over by General Fidel Dávila.* General Orgaz was made High Commissioner in Morocco with the job of maintaining the flow of Moorish mercenaries. The Junta Técnica remained in Burgos while Franco set up his headquarters in Salamanca, near the Madrid battle front without being too near and merely one hour’s drive from Portugal should things turn out badly. Mola was given command of the Army of the North, newly formed by merging his troops with the Army of Africa. Queipo de Llano was given command of the Army of the South, consisting of the scattered forces operating in Andalusia, Badajoz and Morocco. Cabanellas was marginalised in punishment for his lukewarm response to Franco’s elevation, being given the purely symbolic title of Inspector of the Army. Franco could rarely find time to receive him in Salamanca. No doubt he resented the fact that Cabanellas had once been his superior and usually referred to him, like Sanjurjo had done, as ‘Franquito’ (little Franco).58 He was equally unforgiving with other one-time superiors, like Gil Robles, who found himself cold-shouldered.†
One of the first things that Franco did after being elected as Nationalist leader was to send fulsome telegrams to Hitler and Rudolf Hess. Hitler responded with a verbal, rather than a written, message via the aristocratic German diplomat, the Count Du Moulin-Eckart, who was received by Franco on 6 October. Hitler claimed that he could better help Franco by not appearing to have recognized the Nationalist Government until after the capture of Madrid. On the eve of renewing the assault on Madrid, Franco responded in terms of with ‘heartfelt thanks for the Führer’s gesture and complete admiration for him and the new Germany.’ Du Moulin was impressed by the conviction of his enthusiasm for Nazi Germany, reporting that ‘the cordiality with which Franco expressed his veneration for the Führer and Chancellor and his sympathy for Germany, and the decided friendliness of my reception, permitted not even a moment of doubt as to the sincerity of his attitude toward us’.59
In tune with the warmth of such sentiments, there began a massive propaganda campaign in fascist style to elevate Franco into a national figure. An equivalent title to Führer and Duce was adopted in the form of Caudillo – a term linking Franco to the warrior leaders of Spain’s medieval past. Franco considered himself, like them, to be a warrior of God against the infidels who would destroy the nation’s faith and culture.*60 All newspapers in the Nationalist zone had to carry under their masthead the slogan ‘Una Patria, Un Estado, Un Caudillo’ (a deliberate echo of Hitler’s Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer). The ritual chants of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’ were heard with insistent frequency. The sayings and speeches of Franco were reproduced everywhere.
Almost immediately, Nicolás Franco made tentative plans for the creation of a Francoist political party along the lines of General Primo de Rivera’s Unión Patriótica. It would have consisted of conservative elements, largely from the CEDA, and therefore encountered the hostility of the Falange. Realizing how ill-advised it was to work against the ever larger Falange, the brothers dropped the idea.61 There was an element of irony about what was happening. The new powers that had been granted to Franco were given in the belief that a single command would hasten an already imminent victory. In fact, the Nationalist triumph was soon to become a distant long-term prospect. In part that was for reasons beyond the Caudillo’s control, such as the arrival of the International Brigades and Russian tanks and aircraft, and the creation of the Popular Army. However, that such things were able to have the effect that they did was largely Franco’s responsibility, attributable to the delay of nearly two weeks in the march on Madrid as a result of the diversion to Toledo and then of the time devoted to the orchestration of his elevation to supreme power. Increasingly thereafter, it would begin to seem that Franco had an interest in the prolongation of the war in order to have time both to annihilate his political enemies on the Left and his rivals on the Right and to consolidate the mechanisms of his power.
Once established as Head of State, and with the eyes of Nationalist Spain now upon him, Franco’s propagandists built him up as a great Catholic crusader and his public religiosity intensified. From 4 October 1936 until his death, he had a personal chaplain, Father José María Bulart.62 He now began each day by hearing mass, a reflection of both political necessity and the influence of Doña Carmen. In order to please his wife, when he was available he would join in her regular evening rosary, although, at this stage of his career at least, without any great piety.63 No one can say with total certainty what part Carmen Polo played in encouraging her husband’s ambition nor how much he had been affected by Bishop Plá y Deniel’s declaration of a crusade. Doña Carmen believed in his divine mission and such fulsome ecclesiastical support made it easier for her to convince him of it.64
As Franco came to believe in his own special relationship with divine providence, and as he became more isolated and weighed down with power and responsibility, his religiosity became more pronounced.* Apart from any spiritual consolation it may have given him, his new found religiosity also reflected a realistic awareness of the immeasurable assistance which the endorsement of the Catholic Church could give him in terms of clinching foreign