Пол Престон – Franco (страница 33)
The tiny Spanish Communist Party joined the Popular Front, an electoral coalition which, contrary to rightist propaganda and the material sent to Franco by the
Gil Robles’ tactic of gradually breaking up successive Radical cabinets was overtaken in the autumn by the revelation of two massive financial scandals involving followers of Lerroux. In mid-September, Alcalá Zamora invited the dour conservative Republican, Joaquin Chapaprieta, to form a government. With the Radical Party on the verge of disintegration, Gil Robles provoked the resignation of Chapaprieta on 9 December in the belief that he would be asked to form a government. Alcalá Zamora, however, had no faith in Gil Robles’s commitment to the Republic. Instead, when he spoke with the President on 11 December, Gil Robles learned with rage that he was not being asked to be prime minister. Alcalá Zamora pointed out that the degree of government instability demonstrated the need for new elections. Gil Robles could hardly argue that it would now stop since he had provoked that instability in order to pave the way to firm government by himself. He had overplayed his hand. The President was so suspicious of Gil Robles that, throughout the subsequent political crisis, he had the Ministry of War surrounded by Civil Guards and the principal garrisons and airports placed under special vigilance.65
The only choice now open to Gil Robles was to patch together some compromise which would enable the CEDA to avoid elections and thus carry on in the government or else arrange a coup d’état. He tried both options simultaneously. On the same evening a messenger was sent to Cambó, head of the Catalan Lliga, to ask him to join the CEDA and the Radicals in a coalition government. Cambó refused. Meanwhile, in the Ministry of War, Gil Robles was discussing the situation with Fanjul. Fanjul claimed enthusiastically that he and General Varela were prepared to bring the troops of the Madrid garrison onto the streets that very night to prevent the President from going through with his plans to dissolve the Cortes. There were plenty of officers only too willing to join them, especially if a coup had the blessing of the Minister of War and could therefore be seen as an order. However, Gil Robles was worried that such an action might fail, since it would certainly face the resistance of the Socialist and anarchist masses. Nevertheless, he told Fanjul that, if the Army felt that its duty lay in a coup, he would not stand in its way and, indeed, would do all that he could to maintain the continuity of government while it took place. Only practical doubts held him back and so he suggested that Fanjul check the opinion of Franco and other generals before making a definite decision. He then passed a sleepless night while Fanjul, Varela, Goded and Franco weighed up the chances of success. All were aware of the problem presented by the fact that there was every likelihood that the Civil Guard and the police would oppose a coup.66
Calvo Sotelo, confined to bed with a fierce attack of sciatica, also sent Juan Antonio Ansaldo to see Franco, Goded and Fanjul to urge them to make a coup against the plans of Alcalá Zamora. Franco, however, convinced his comrades that, in the light of the strength of working class resistance during the Asturian events, the Army was not yet ready for a coup.67 When the young monarchist plotter, the Conde de los Andes, telephoned Madrid from Biarritz to hear the details of the expected coup, Ansaldo replied ‘The usual generals, and especially the
In response to the move towards a more liberal cabinet, José Antonio Primo de Rivera sent his lieutenant Raimundo Fernández Cuesta to Toledo on 27 December with a wild proposal to Colonel José Moscardó, military governor and Director of the
Franco made it clear that he resented these initiatives from civilians as attempts to take advantage of the ‘most distinguished officers’ for their own partisan purposes. Moscardó was one of a number of officers, to whom he referred as ‘simplistic comrades’, who brought such proposals to him. He told them all that to precipitate matters was to guarantee failure. The job of the Army was to maintain its unity and discipline to be ready to intervene if and when the Republic proved itself totally unviable. What the Army could not do was to try to destroy the Republic before the population was ready.71 After Gil Robles was replaced as Minister of War by General Nicolás Molero, Franco was left as Chief of the General Staff. Like his predecessor, Molero was happy for Franco to get on with a job which he did well. Franco wrote to a friend on 14 January 1936, ‘I am still here in my post and I don’t think they’ll move me’. His contentment, along with his natural caution, may well have contributed to his inclination against conspiratorial adventures.72
The elections were scheduled for 16 February 1936. Throughout January, rumours of a military coup involving Franco were so insistent that, late one night, the interim prime minister Manuel Portela Valladares sent the Director-General de Seguridad, Vicente Santiago, to the Ministry of War to see Franco and clarify the situation. The Chief of the General Staff was clearly still in the same cautious mood in which he had greeted Moscardó a few days earlier. Nevertheless, there was a double-edge in his reply. ‘The rumours are completely false; I am not conspiring and I will not conspire as long as there is no danger of Communism in Spain; and to put your mind at rest even more, I give you my word of honour, with all the guarantees that this carries between comrades in arms. While you are in the Dirección General de Seguridad, I have complete confidence that law and order, which is of such importance to all Spaniards and above all to the Army, will not be overthrown. Our job is to co-operate.’ The Director-General de Seguridad then said something which was uncannily prophetic: ‘If you and your comrades at any time feel that the circumstances which you mention come about and you are pushed to a rising, I dare say that if you don’t win in forty-eight hours there will follow misfortunes the like of which were never seen in Spain or in any revolution.’ Franco replied ‘We will not make the same mistake as Primo de Rivera in putting the Army in charge of the government’.73 That Franco should discount the possibility of military government after a coup reflected his recent discussions with Goded and Fanjul about the plan to put Gil Robles in power, a plan rejected as unsafe.
Inevitably, the election campaign was fought in an atmosphere of violent struggle. In propaganda terms, the Right enjoyed an enormous advantage. Rightist electoral funds dramatically exceeded those of the poverty-stricken Left, although Franco was to remain convinced that the reverse was the case. He believed that the Left was awash with gold sent from Moscow and money stolen by the revolutionaries in October 1934.74 Ten thousand posters and 50 million leaflets were printed for the CEDA. They presented the elections in terms of a life-or-death struggle between good and evil, survival and destruction. The Popular Front based its campaign on the threat of fascism and the need for an amnesty for the prisoners of October.
In fact, Franco was absent from Spain during part of the election campaign, attending the funeral of George V in London. He was chosen to attend because he was Chief of Staff and because he had once served in the Eighth Infantry Regiment of which the King of England was Honorary Colonel. He attended the funeral service at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday 28 January and, along with other foreign dignitaries, accompanied the coffin to its final resting place in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.75 On the return journey by cross-channel ferry, Franco made some significant remarks to Major Antonio Barroso, the Spanish military attaché in Paris, who had accompanied him on the trip. He told Barroso that the Popular Front was the direct creation of the Comintern and was intended as a Trojan Horse to introduce Communism into Spain. He said that Mola and Goded were equally worried and everything now hinged on what the Popular Front did if it won the elections. The Army had to be ready to intervene if necessary.76