The Last Days of the Spanish Republic

According to Herbert Matthews, ‘No one could call it an oratorical masterpiece: it was disjointed, and badly delivered, by a man so exhausted that he could hardly stand, yet it should take its place with the great documents of Spanish history.’47 In contrast, for Stevenson, Negrín’s speech ‘did not carry as much conviction as was usual with his pronouncements. He spoke valiantly about continued resistance and ultimate triumph, but his words came from his lips and not from his heart.’ The following day, Stevenson and his military attaché had an hour-long meeting with Negrín and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, ‘in a dark, meagrely furnished room’. Stevenson reported to London that ‘Dr Negrín appeared to be as combative as ever. He showed at times flashes of humour, when his face would light up. At other times, it would set in savage determination. He was obviously very tired. He reiterated to me his fixed intention to resist as long as possible in Catalonia and thereafter, if necessary.’ Negrín stated that a victory for Franco would be disastrous for the democratic powers, which Stevenson countered by saying this had been duly considered in both London and Paris. They then moved on to discussion of the three points that Negrín regarded as the sine qua non of any peace treaty – that Spain would be independent, that the Spanish people would be free to choose their own form of government and that there would be no reprisals. Negrín said that if these were guaranteed the Republican forces would lay down their arms. In his view, the request for these guarantees had to come jointly from the British, French and United States governments, since to request them himself would be disastrous for the Republic. Stevenson merely asked permission to forward this point to London.48

On the same morning, the French Ambassador, Jules Henry, had also gone to Figueras and urged surrender on Negrín, who refused categorically. Henry described the encounter in Figueras to Georges Bonnet: ‘it is there that Negrín hides like a tiger trapped in the last refuge of the jungle, and it is from there that he hopes to direct what could be the last act of the Spanish tragedy … Negrín with a smile on his lips has assured me once more of his confidence in the final success of the cause that he defends … This time I am not convinced.’49 In fact, with Franco about to gain control of the entire frontier between Spain and France, it was absolutely essential for Paris to have some sort of diplomatic relations with him. To this end, the government had already sent the Senator Léon Bérard to Burgos to negotiate arrangements for the return to Spain of the refugees already on French territory and of those expected to arrive, as well as for formal representation at Franco’s headquarters. Although the French government was anxious to send an ambassador to Franco, it could not do so as long as Negrín remained in power since it could not have two Spanish ambassadors in Paris. In the meantime, until formal diplomatic relations were established, Paris hoped to establish some sort of representation at Franco’s headquarters similar to that constituted by the British diplomatic agent Sir Robert Hodgson. The fear was that Franco under Italian pressure would refuse and insist on having a fully fledged ambassador.50 This being the case, it was hardly likely that Negrín could expect much support from Paris. Indeed, when Bérard met Franco’s Foreign Minister, the Conde de Jordana, he broached the subject of a guarantee of no reprisals as a prerequisite of recognition of Franco’s government. Jordana told him brusquely: ‘The Generalísimo has amply demonstrated his humanitarian feelings but at this moment the only possibility is the unconditional surrender of the enemy which must trust in his generosity and that of his Government.’51

Two days after his meeting with Negrín, Ralph Stevenson received ‘a secret and personal message’ from President Azaña stating that ‘he was at complete variance with Dr Negrín’s policy of continued resistance. He claimed that his efforts to contact the French Ambassador had been blocked by Negrín. Stevenson immediately informed Jules Henry, who visited Azaña later the same afternoon. The President’s message to both diplomats was that their two countries should press Negrín’s government to seek an immediate cessation of hostilities. If Negrín did not accede to pressure from the two governments, Azaña told both ambassadors, it was his intention to resign as President.52

The British and French governments meanwhile decided to press Negrín to agree to the cessation of hostilities ‘on the understanding that General Franco would guarantee the peaceful occupation of the remainder of the country with no political reprisals and the removal of foreign troops from Spain’. In the afternoon of 6 February, Stevenson and Henry met Álvarez del Vayo at Le Perthus. They informed him that the British and French governments were seeking guarantees from Franco and asked if the Republican government would agree to a cessation of hostilities if they were forthcoming. Since there was no response from Franco, Álvarez del Vayo could undertake only to discuss the matter with Negrín. The next day, Negrín received the British and French representatives at the house in the village of La Vajol where he was staying. He conceded that defeat in Catalonia could not be avoided but expressed his view that a European war was inevitable and that resistance could be sustained in the centre-south zone of the Republic. In this regard, he hoped that the equipment being taken into France by the retreating Republican forces could be repatriated. In fact, Georges Bonnet had already informed Franco’s envoy in Paris, José María Quiñones de León, that his government would not permit the return of Spanish Republican troops and equipment to the centre-south zone.53 Unaware of this, Negrín repeated to the British and French diplomats that he would agree to a cessation of hostilities if Franco made a declaration accepting his three conditions of Spanish independence, free elections and no reprisals. To this third point, he added that he wanted an undertaking that at-risk Republican political and military leaders could be evacuated from the centre-south zone under international supervision. It was agreed that this message would be passed on to London and Paris.

After the meeting, Stevenson met with the US Counsellor, Walter Thurston, who commented that Franco would almost certainly reject the demand for Spaniards to be able to choose their own destiny and probably the other two conditions as well. Stevenson replied that the key point was that Negrín had offered capitulation and since the offer had been made, ‘the working out of terms will be a mere formality’. This suggested that the British, like the French, were not likely to be overly concerned about ensuring that Franco would not carry out reprisals. The American Ambassador Claude Bowers believed that ‘Negrin’s purpose is to force a formal official rejection of the terms for the sake of the record or their acceptance’. Bonnet discussed Henry’s report with the US Ambassador in Paris, William Bullitt, on 8 February and said that the British were transmitting Negrín’s terms to Franco, adding that he thought Franco would reject them and propose unconditional surrender.54

The British and French response, Negrín reported later, was that ‘it was impossible to reach a satisfactory agreement with the so-called Burgos government because totalitarian governments do not understand humanitarian sentiments nor are they interested in pacification or magnanimity and, what is more, the rebels had claimed that they would only punish common crimes’. To this, Negrín’s understandable reaction was: ‘In a war like ours, a pitiless and savage civil war, either all crimes are common crimes or none are.’ Accordingly, he offered himself as an expiatory victim, letting it be known through the British and French representatives that he would hand himself over if Franco would accept his symbolic execution in exchange for the lives of the mass of innocent Republican civilians. He did not reveal this offer to the majority of his own cabinet. Zugazagoitia knew about it, but Negrín did not make it public until after the Second World War.55

Negrín commented to Vidarte after the session: ‘People want peace! Me too. But wanting peace is not the same as facilitating defeat. As long as I am prime minister, I will not accept the unconditional surrender of our glorious army, nor a deal that might save several hundred of the most at-risk individuals but allow them to shoot half a million Spaniards. Rather than that, I would shoot myself.’56 Negrín’s offer to hand himself over as the sacrificial scapegoat was ignored by Franco. The government remained in Spain at the Castillo de Figueras until the last units of the Republican army had crossed the frontier on 9 February.

The situation was summed up succinctly by the correspondent of The Times of London, Lawrence Fernsworth. A conservative and Roman Catholic, he sympathized with the plight of the defeated Republicans. He wrote: ‘At all points where the Pyrenees here slanted away toward the sea, fleeing hordes of Spaniards, each one the embodiment of an individual tragedy, spilled over the mountainous borders, immense avalanches of human debris.’ Negrín planned to hold out, as Fernsworth put it, to ‘protect the escape from Madrid of thousands who would otherwise fall victims of Franco’s reprisals’. Casado opposed Negrín by launching the falsehood that resistance was merely a cover for the establishment of a Communist dictatorship.57 This notion obviously was already axiomatic for the Francoists, but it also appealed to the anarchists and Socialists who had resented the arrogance and harshness of Communist policies during the war. Assuming, as Casado and the anarchists did, that the PCE was a puppet of the Kremlin, a Communist dictatorship in Spain would have made little sense. Nothing could have been less in accord with the USSR’s needs throughout both 1938 and 1939. In 1938, Soviet priorities were for collective security via alliance with France and Britain against Nazi Germany. After the Munich Agreement, the USSR – now moving towards the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 – was not prepared to alienate Hitler.58

On the night of 8 February, one of the few colleagues who remained in Spain with Negrín, his friend Dr Rafael Méndez, said to Álvarez del Vayo: ‘I have no idea what we are doing here. I rather fear that tonight we’ll be awakened by the rifle-butts of the Carlist requetés [militia].’ Hearing this, Negrín called Méndez aside and said: ‘We won’t leave here until the last soldier has crossed the frontier.’59 Yet again at the forefront of his mind was the determination to see these Republicans safe from the reprisals of Franco. The Carlists, an extreme right-wing monarchist faction, had shown elsewhere that they were all too ready to carry out mass executions. As Negrín wrote later to Prieto: ‘From the last house on the Spanish side of the frontier which the rebels occupied an hour later, I stood for eighteen hours watching the file of the last forces that were retreating into France. I managed not to lose my head, and simply by dint of doing my duty, it was possible to save those half a million Spaniards who are now awaiting our help.’60

Only after General Rojo had arrived to announce that the final Republican troops in Catalonia had crossed the frontier on the morning of 9 February did Negrín enter France. His most loyal ministers wept. At the Spanish Consulate in Perpignan, an improvised cabinet meeting was held. Negrín announced that he would travel on to Toulouse and from there fly to Spain. Some ministers thought that he was mad, but as he himself later explained: ‘If I hadn’t done that then, today I would die of shame; I probably would not have been able to survive my disgust with myself. Was the Government going to leave those still fighting in the Central zone without leadership or support? Was it the Government of Resistance that would flee and surrender them?’61

Shortly after Negrín had reached Perpignan on Thursday 9 February, an emissary from General Miaja reached the Spanish Consulate. Captain Antonio López Fernández, Miaja’s fiercely anti-Communist secretary, came with the mission of persuading Negrín to remain in France and for President Azaña to grant Miaja permission to negotiate peace with the rebels. Prior to leaving Alicante on the plane for Toulouse, he had telephoned General Rojo, who had asked him to come to the Spanish Embassy in Paris to meet both himself and Azaña on 10 February. On reaching the Consulate in Perpignan late on Thursday evening, Captain López was received by Negrín, Álvarez del Vayo and the Minister of Finance, Francisco Méndez Aspe. He gave them a detailed report on the situation in the central zone, the thrust of which was that there was no possibility of further resistance and that the only possible solution was to entrust Miaja with the task of negotiating surrender on the best terms possible. Negrín listened in silence until López concluded with the words: ‘Prime Minister, at this moment, the Centre-South zone is like an aircraft in flight whose engines have stopped. The salvation of those on board depends on the skill of the pilot. In the view of all the senior officers in the zone, that pilot is General Miaja.’ When Negrín asked what was needed for resistance to continue, López replied: ‘There is no possibility of resisting; there are no weapons, no food, no fuel and our armament is so worn out, with no possibility of replacement or repair, that to oblige the Army to resist is self-evidently senseless and criminal.’ When Álvarez del Vayo pressed him further, López replied that resistance would be possible only if huge deliveries of arms and aircraft could arrive immediately. Negrín told López that he would consider his report and that, the next morning, he and Vayo would go to the central zone and discuss future prospects with Miaja.62

López then went to Paris and had a meeting with Azaña and Generals Rojo and Hernández Saravia and Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Jurado. There he found a more receptive audience for his pessimistic report. He asked Azaña to return to the central zone to oblige Negrín to resign and to give constitutional legitimacy to negotiations with the Francoists. López’s message from Miaja was as hopelessly naive as the beliefs of Casado. It echoed the conclusions of the lunch shared by Miaja a week before with Casado, Matallana and Menéndez in Valencia. He told the President that it was necessary to form a government of professional soldiers who would be able to secure a reasonable peace treaty with Franco. Azaña allegedly replied: ‘I have decided to wash my hands of the problems of Spain. Whisper to General Miaja that he should do whatever he thinks best and what he considers to be his duty as a soldier and a Spaniard.’ Rojo then gave López letters for Miaja, Matallana and Negrín. López later claimed implausibly that the letter to Negrín urged him to resign and leave Spain while those to Miaja and Matalla instructed them to execute Negrín if he refused to leave. No such letters have been found subsequently.63

According to Vicente Uribe, ‘The majority of the Ministers had no desire to go to Madrid, morale was extremely low. No one dared say no and preparations to leave were made in accordance with Negrín’s orders.’ Negrín issued instructions to the soldiers and civilians who had accompanied him, some to return to the centre-south zone and others to remain in France to deal with the refugees and other issues regarding the evacuation. From Toulouse, he flew that night to Alicante, arriving on the morning of the next day. He was accompanied by Julio Álvarez del Vayo, his Foreign Minister, and Santiago Garcés Arroyo, the head of the Republic’s security apparatus, the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar. They flew under assumed names, paying their passage on a scheduled Air France flight.64

Before leaving, Negrín and Méndez Aspe had a meeting with Trifón Gómez, the quartermaster general of the Republican army. Gómez claimed later that they had discussed the question of food supplies for the centre zone. Negrín allegedly told him to continue sending food but to be careful not to build up stocks. Méndez Aspe allegedly went even further, saying that the war would probably last only another couple of weeks, and that, if there were enough supplies for that time, he was opposed to Gómez sending more. General Rojo made a similar point in his memoir of the period: ‘The supply services in the other zone were being dismantled: nothing could be sent, neither men, nor arms, nor matériel, nor munitions, nor raw materials; on the other hand, the political authorities were concentrating on bringing things to an end.’65

Assuming this to be true, it shows two things: first, that Negrín was returning to make peace and thus using the rhetoric of resistance as a bargaining chip and, second, that he and Méndez Aspe wanted to conserve resources for the inevitable exodus and subsequent exile. After overseeing the passage of the last Republican troops over the French frontier, Zugazagoitia remembered Negrín saying: ‘Let’s see if we can do the second part. That’s going to be more difficult.’ Zugazagoitia went on: ‘We were bringing things to an end and when he contemplated returning to the Centre-South zone, Negrín had only one thing on his mind, the end, with as little damage as possible, of a war that was lost.’ This coincides with the testimony of Negrín’s secretary Benigno Rodríguez, to whom he said that he was returning to Spain ‘to save as much as we can’.66

4

The Quest for an Honourable Peace

It was assumed by many of the politicians, army officers and functionaries who had crossed into France in early February 1939 that the government would not be returning to Spain. Even some cabinet ministers had their doubts. In cafés where exiles gathered and even in a meeting of senior members of the CNT, there was much venomous gossip about Negrín ranging from blaming him for the fall of Catalonia to accusing him of abandoning the Republic.1 Of course, Negrín did no such thing but went back in the hope of being able to negotiate a reasonable settlement. He arrived totally exhausted and drained emotionally and physically. Since becoming Prime Minister nearly two years earlier, the stress that he endured had increased exponentially. As well as exercising the basic duties of president of the council of ministers, he had continued to work hard to build on his achievements as Minister of Finance in ensuring the Republic’s economic survival. In April 1938, he had also become Minister of Defence with an intensely active involvement in the role. Throughout, he had carried out a notable diplomatic effort in a vain quest for international mediation to bring the war to an end without reprisals on the part of the Francoists. In addition, he had to deal with the petty squabbles and more than petty jealousies both within the wider coalition of Republican entities, the Popular Front, and within the Socialist Party. Inevitably, all of this took its toll. Just before midnight on Saturday 28 January, Azaña met Rojo and Negrín to discuss the situation in the wake of the loss of Barcelona. Azaña was shocked to see the ‘utter dejection’ of a Negrín who was ‘beaten and on his knees’. After the fall of Catalonia, and the Prime Minister’s long vigil at the frontier, his closest collaborators were alarmed at the visible deterioration in a man of once boundless energies.2

The full horror of the defeat in Catalonia, the subsequent exodus and the suffering of those condemned to the makeshift camps in southern France was never fully reported in the centre-south zone. Nevertheless, there was no shortage of rumours, together with some reliable information and considerable exaggeration. It all fed the fears of the already exhausted, starving and demoralized population. The sense that a similar fate awaited them led to a widespread hope that someone in authority would appeal to the other side for a negotiated peace. For some at least, in the eloquent phrase of Ángel Bahamonde, ‘The psychology of defeat led to an acceptance of blame, the confession of sin and the payment of repentance, sieved through the imagined forgiveness of our brothers on the other side.’3 In fact, many hundreds of thousands of Republicans expected nothing of ‘brothers on the other side’. They knew only too well what Franco’s clemency and justice meant. They were those who would flee en masse to the coast at the end of March 1939 in the vain hope of evacuation. Yet they too longed for an end to the war. In fact, for two reasons, there would be virtually no more fighting in the centre zone. On the one hand, Franco needed time to reorganize his forces after the titanic effort involved in the Catalan campaign. On the other, he had confidence that the treachery of Casado, Matallana and other pro-rebel officers would bring down the Republic without further military effort on his part.

Palmiro Togliatti, the senior Comintern representative in Spain, later reported to Moscow on the situation after the loss of Catalonia: ‘The great majority of political and military leaders had lost all confidence in the possibility of continued resistance. There was a general conviction that the army of the central zone could not repel an enemy attack because of their overwhelming numerical superiority and because of our lack of weaponry, aircraft and transport, and its organic weakness.’ Many professional officers, including the Communist ones, with the sole exception of Francisco Ciutat, believed that prolonged resistance was impossible. Colonel Antonio Cordón, the under-secretary of the Ministry of Defence, the recently promoted General Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, the chief of the air force, and Colonel Carlos Núñez Maza, the under-secretary of air, all career officers but also members of the Communist Party, told Togliatti ‘openly’ that they did not believe resistance was possible in the centre zone unless the men and weapons taken into France could be returned to Spain. In his report to Moscow, Togliatti wrote: ‘I also believe that the conviction that further resistance was impossible was also quite widespread among the officers who had risen from the ranks of the militia. The same belief was also unanimous among the cadres of the Anarchists and of the Republican and Socialist parties, and in the police and state apparatus. Accordingly, the problem was no longer how to organize resistance, but how to end the war “with honour and dignity”.’ There were divergent opinions on how to do this. However, the one point on which there was widespread agreement was that the Communists were the ‘sole obstacle’ to ending the war. By smearing the Communists as ‘the enemies of peace’, the defeatists had found a way of channelling the war-weariness and fear of the masses. Togliatti saw this slogan as the ‘cement’ that united the disparate elements of the non-Communist left. At least retrospectively, he believed that Negrín himself had ‘no faith in the possibility of further resistance’.4

The most visceral hostility to the Republican government was to be found in the anarchist movement. This derived in part from the bitter resentment of many anarchists about the way in which the libertarian desire for a revolutionary war had been crushed in the first half of 1937 in the interests of a more realistic centralized war effort. However, the anarchists had also been on the receiving end of extremely harsh treatment by the Communist-dominated security services because of the ease with which the CNT–FAI could be infiltrated by the Fifth Column. The Republican press, Communist, Socialist and Left Republican, frequently published accusations about Fifth Column networks that functioned on the basis of using CNT membership cards.5 The crack security units known as the Brigadas Especiales were focused on the detention, interrogation and, sometimes, elimination of suspicious elements. This meant not only Francoists but also members of the Madrid CNT. The Communist José Cazorla, who in December 1936 succeeded Santiago Carrillo as the Counsellor for Public Order in the Junta de Defensa de Madrid, believed the CNT to be out of control and infiltrated by agents provocateurs of the Fifth Column.6 The Communist press demanded strong measures against these uncontrolled elements and those who protected them, calling for the annihilation of the agents provocateurs who were described as ‘new dynamiters’, a term intended to invoke echoes of anarchist terrorists of earlier times.7 The presence of Fifth Columnists was perhaps to be expected in an officer corps of the armed forces largely made up of career officers who sympathized with their erstwhile comrades of the other side. However, infiltration of one-time militia units could also be found. Cazorla investigated Fifth Columnist infiltration of the ineffective secret services (Servicios Secretos de Guerra) run in the Ministry of Defence by the CNT’s Manuel Salgado Moreira. Shortly before the dissolution of the Junta de Defensa by Largo Caballero, on 14 April 1937, José Cazorla announced that an important spy-ring in the Republican Army had been dismantled. Among those arrested was Alfonso López de Letona, a Fifth Columnist who had reached a high rank in the general staff of the 14th Division of the People’s Army, commanded by the anarchist Cipriano Mera. López de Letona had become a senior member of Manuel Salgado’s staff on the basis of a recommendation by Mera’s chief of staff, Antonio Verardini Díez de Ferreti.8