Franco. Paul Preston
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Mussolini was so delighted that he promoted Roatta to Major-General. The Duce and his Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Army, Alberto Pariani, immediately produced ambitious plans for the Italian troops to sweep on to Almería and then through Murcia and Alicante to Valencia.102 However, Roatta’s reports to Rome on the eve of the attack on Málaga had presented a bleak picture of Italian disorganization, indiscipline and lack of technical preparation. Now he had to restrain Mussolini’s enthusiasm and persuade him that a long haul along the south coast exposed to constant flank attack would be less decisive than operations envisaged by Franco in the centre.103
Franco was happy to get Italian help on the Madrid front and quick to deflate the euphoric Queipo who was anxious to use the triumph at Málaga as the basis for a triumphal march through Eastern Andalusia towards Almería. Franco remained obsessed with Madrid and had no reason to want to give away triumphs to Queipo de Llano. Accordingly, he prohibited further advance in Andalusia, to the bitter chagrin of Queipo.104 It was, however, with some trepidation that Franco viewed the prospect of what seemed at the time like a fearsome Italian army, directed from Rome, allowing Mussolini graciously to hand him victories on a plate. It was a perception which would have disastrous consequences during the battle of Guadalajara.
At this time the nationalist press began to circulate a story which linked Franco’s destiny with the intercession of the saints. Allegedly, in the chaos of defeat, the military commander of Málaga, Colonel José Villalba Rubio, left various items of luggage behind him when he fled. In a suitcase left in his hotel was found the holy relic of the hand of St Teresa of Avila which had been stolen from the Carmelite Convent at Ronda.105 In fact, the relic was found in police custody. It was sent to Franco who kept it with him for the rest of his life. The recovery of the relic was the excuse for the exaltation of St Teresa as ‘the Saint of the Race’, the champion of Spain and her religion in the Reconquista, during the conquest of America and in the battles of the Counter-Reformation. Catholic and political propagandists alike stressed the Saint’s association with the Caudillo in similar exaltation of his providential role.106 Franco himself seems to have believed in his special relationship with St Teresa. Cardinal Gomá reported Franco’s reluctance to part with the arm as proof of his intense Catholic faith and his belief that he was leading a religious crusade. The Bishop of Málaga granted permission for the relic to remain in Franco’s possession and never left his side on any trip which obliged him to sleep away from home.*107
Encouraged by the easy success which he anticipated in the south and by the availability of the Condor Legion, Franco had simultaneously renewed his efforts to take Madrid. On 6 February 1937, an army of nearly sixty thousand well-equipped men, under the direction of General Orgaz, had launched a huge attack through the Jarama valley towards the Madrid-Valencia highway to the east of the capital. Still convinced that he could capture the capital, Franco took a special interest in the campaign.108 Two days later, his determination to win would be intensified by a desire for a victory to overshadow the Italian triumph at Málaga.
Almost simultaneously, Mussolini had sent a new Ambassador to Nationalist Spain, the emollient Roberto Cantalupo, who arrived shortly after the battle for Málaga.109 It was a reflection of Franco’s seething resentment at the behaviour of Roatta and Mussolini over the conquest of Málaga that he kept Cantalupo waiting for days before receiving him. Cantalupo got a sense that, although everyone knew that Málaga had been captured by the Italians, no one said so. ‘Here’, he reported to Ciano on 17 February, ‘the coin of gratitude circulates hardly at all.’ When he finally met the Caudillo for an informal meeting, Cantalupo got the impression that Franco believed in ultimate victory but was no longer certain that it was anything other than a long way off. If anything, the Caudillo seemed to prefer the prospect of a long war although he put off explaining why for a future meeting. He did make it clear that he would not contemplate a negotiated peace.110
The implicit conflict between Mussolini’s urge for the rapid and spectacular defeat of the Republic and Franco’s gradual approach quickly came into the open. Four days after the fall of Málaga, Roatta being wounded, he sent his Chief of Staff, Colonel Emilio Faldella, to visit the Generalísimo in Salamanca and discuss the next operation in which the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (CTV), as the Italian forces now came to be known, might be used. On the afternoon of 12 February, Faldella found Franco’s staff jubilant about their forces’ early thrust over the Jarama river and what they assumed to be an imminent and decisive victory. Faldella was told by Franco’s chief of operations, Colonel Antonio Barroso, that Alcalá de Henares would be occupied within five days and Madrid cut off from Valencia. Faldella told Barroso that he was going to propose that the next operation for the CTV should be an offensive against both Sagunto, to the north of Valencia, and Valencia itself, one of the options favoured by Mussolini since mid-January and communicated to the Generalísimo by Anfuso on 22 January. Barroso advised him against even mentioning it on the grounds that Franco would never allow the Italians to carry out an autonomous assault on a politically sensitive target like the Republican capital, given his central concern with his own prestige. Accordingly, after consulting Roatta by telephone, Faldella altered the note which he had brought for Franco to suggest instead the remaining option of those contemplated by Mussolini after the meeting with Göring, a major push from Sigüenza to Guadalajara to close the circle around Madrid.111
When Faldella was received by Franco at 8 p.m. on 13 February, the usually polite Generalísimo ostentatiously failed to thank him for the Italian action at Málaga and said ‘the note has surprised me, because it is a real imposition’. The expected success in the Jarama gave the Caudillo the confidence to speak in stronger terms than previously to Faldella, who was after all the acting military representative of Mussolini. ‘When all is said and done’, Franco told Faldella, ‘Italian troops have been sent here without requesting my authorization. First I was told that companies of volunteers were coming to be incorporated into Spanish battalions. Then I was asked for them to be formed into independent battalions on their own and I agreed. Next senior officers and generals arrived to command them, and finally already-formed units began to arrive. Now you want to oblige me to allow these troops to fight together under General Roatta’s orders, when my plans were altogether different.’ Faldella replied that the reasoning behind all this was simply that Mussolini was trying to make good the failure of the Germans to supply troops to which Franco responded: ‘This is a war of a special kind, that has to be fought with exceptional methods so that such a numerous mass cannot be used all at once, but spread out over several fronts it would be more useful.’112 These remarks revealed not just Franco’s resentments about Italian aid, but also the limitations of his strategic vision. His preference for piecemeal actions over a wide area reflected both his own practical military experiences in a small-scale colonial war and his desire to conquer Spain slowly and so consolidate his political supremacy.113
Faldella tried to make him see the opportunity for a decisive victory offered by the determined use of the Italian CTV. Franco would not be shaken from his preference for the gradual and systematic occupation of Republican territory: ‘In a civil war, a systematic occupation of territory accompanied by the necessary purge (limpieza) is preferable to a rapid rout of the enemy armies which leaves the country still infested with enemies.’ Faldella pointed out that a rapid defeat of the Republic at Valencia would make it easier for him to root out the Left in Spain. At this point, Barroso interrupted and, as his master’s voice, said ‘you must take into account that the Generalísimo’s prestige is the most