Franco himself visited Madrid at the end of July in order ‘to choose a horse’.74 It was rumoured, to his annoyance, that he had come to join the plot. When asked by other officers, as he was repeatedly, if he were part of the conspiracy, he replied that he did not believe that the time had yet come for a rising but that he respected those who thought that it had. He was outraged to discover that some senior officers were openly stating that he was involved. He told them that, if they continued to ‘spread these calumnies’, he would ‘take energetic measures’. By chance, he met Sanjurjo, Goded, Varela and Millán Astray at the Ministry of War. Varela told him that Sanjurjo wanted to sound him out about the forthcoming coup. Sanjurjo at first denied this but agreed to meet Franco and Varela together. Over lunch, Franco told them categorically that they should not count on his participation in any kind of military uprising. In a barely veiled rebuke to Sanjurjo for his behaviour in April 1931, Franco justified his refusal to join the plot on the grounds that, since the Republic had come about because of the military defection from the cause of the monarchy, the Army should not now try to change things.75 This meeting could account for the caustic remark made by Sanjurjo in the summer of 1933 during his imprisonment after the coup’s failure: ‘Franquito es un cuquito que va a lo suyito’ (‘little Franco is a crafty so-and-so who looks after himself’).76
The Sanjurjo coup was poorly organized and, in Madrid, easily dismantled. It was briefly successful in Seville but, with a column of troops loyal to the government marching on the city, Sanjurjo fled.77 The humiliation of part of the Army and the reawakening of the mood of popular fiesta which had initially greeted the establishment of the Republic occasioned by Sanjurjo’s defeat cannot have failed to convince Franco of the wisdom of his prognostications about the rising.78 The fact that the armed urban police, the Guardias de Asalto and the Civil Guard had played no part in the rising had underlined their importance. Franco was more convinced than ever that any attempted coup d’état needed to count on their support.
Azaña had long been worried that Franco might be involved in a plot against the regime and in the course of the Sanjurjada had feared that he might be part of the coup. However, when he telephoned La Coruña on 10 August, he was relieved to find that Franco was at his post. Curiously, he very nearly was not. Franco had requested permission for a brief spell of leave in order to take his wife and daughter on a trip around the beautiful fjord-like bays of Galicia, the rías bajas, but it had been refused since his immediate superior, Major-General Félix de Vera, had also been about to go away. Accordingly, when the coup took place, Franco had been in acting command of military forces in Galicia.79
The conspiratorial Right, both civilian and military, reached the more general conclusion which Franco had drawn in advance – that they must never again make the mistake of inadequate preparation. A monarchist ‘conspiratorial committee’ was set up by members of the extreme rightist group Acción Española and Captain Jorge Vigón of the General Staff in late September 1932 to begin preparations for a future military rising. The theological, moral and political legitimacy of a rising against the Republic was argued in the group’s journal Acción Española, of which Franco had been a subscriber since its first number in December 1931.80 The group operated from Ansaldo’s house in Biarritz. Substantial sums of money were collected from rightist sympathizers to buy arms and to finance political destabilization. One of the earliest operations was to set up subversive cells within the Army itself, and the responsibility for this task was given to Lieutenant-Colonel Valentín Galarza of the General Staff.81 Galarza had been involved in the Sanjurjada but nothing could be proved against him. Azaña wrote in his diary, ‘I have left without a posting another Lieutenant-Colonel of the General Staff, Galarza, an intimate of Sanjurjo and Goded, who before the Republic was one of the great mangoneadores (meddlers) of the Ministry. Galarza is intelligent, capable and obliging, slippery and obedient. But he is definitely on the other side. There is nothing against him in the prosecution case. Nevertheless, he is one of the most dangerous’.82 All that Azaña could do was to leave Galarza without an active service posting. Galarza aimed to recruit key generals and Franco, already 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.
