ANTIFRANCOIST RESISTANCE IN SPAIN (1936-1952)
Jorge Marco Lecture in The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center New York University 2010 The Spanish Civil War was marked by the slow but progressive advance of rebel troops through republican territory. Much of the previously republican population found itself living in newly occupied areas. In this situation, a large number of terrified people decided to escape to the republican zone. Frequently, they were separated from republican territory by huge distances and geographical obstacles. Men, women and children formed part of a mass exodus to the mountains. Galicia, Huelva, Málaga, León, Zamora, Asturias and Santander were thus the areas where the huidos were most significant. Throughout the war too, it was also the case that young men conscripted into the Francoist Army deserted and joined the fugitives. Between July 1936 and April 1939, the number of huidos was somewhere between ten and twenty thousand. Initially, they formed self-defence groups to protect themselves from the attacks of the rebel army. Later, they tried to participate in the war by carrying out robberies and small acts of sabotage. The huídos also collaborated with the Republican Army¶s guerrilla sabotage units. Here they served as guides (prácticos) who knew the local terrain and conditions. The huidos were themselves poorly armed, and their own actions were more defensive than offensive. The first of April 1939 marked the end of the military phase of the civil war; of battlefield confrontation. But the war itself was far from over. The winning Francoist coalition¶s objective was to eliminate all trace of the cultures, identities and values associated with the Republic and to control and cleanse (if not kill) those sections of the population who bore those values - while also constructing them as social outsiders (the infamous µAnti-Spain¶). Thus the 1940s constitute an ongoing war, if not one waged in conventional military terms. Here the regime¶s weapons were military courts; death sentences and prison; economic expropriation of the defeated, the purges of the professions and so on. A huge web of punitive resources extended out into society beyond the prison walls. This web blurred the lines between prison and society and repeatedly hit home to stigmatise and exclude all those that the regime defined as µthe defeated¶. This is the crucial context if one wants to understand the Anti-Franco guerrilla post the first of April 1939. It¶s important to understand that this was not, for the most part, a simple continuation of the wartime huidos. Of course, a small minority of wartime huidos/guerrilla remained µin the mountains¶. But most, along with a majority of the soldiers from the Republican army, went back to their homes after the first of April 1939 expecting to return to a normal peacetime life. But their hopes were dashed. We must remember that a state of war existed de jure in Spain until 1948 and one of the key objectives of the military authorities was to detain and investigate the Republican troops
returned from the front. Denunciations, concentration camps, prisons, executions: this was what awaited many Republican soldiers. Thus for the defeated there was no normal everyday life after the first of April. The regime did not permit this and many chose to go to the mountains rather than suffer the violence, fear and humiliation meted out by the regime in pursuit of its goal of total (totalitarian) social control. The first groups of post 1939 huidos began to form around neighbours and families. Ideological affinity was not so important at this stage; the huídos¶ only aim was to fight against the dictatorship and to do so mainly as a means of survival. A shortage of weapons and worsening morale meant that the groups¶ actions were more defensive than offensive. But the huidos still succeeded in orchestrating many robberies and kidnappings (in order to fund their activities), and some acts of sabotage. What changed this picture was the Second World War. It transformed the perspectives and objectives of much of the armed resistance to Franco. The possibility of an Allied victory raised the morale of the µdefeated¶. They thought that the defeat of European fascism would lead to the toppling of the Spanish dictatorship. The PCE began to organise the huidos, forming new groups across the country (these were called the µAgrupaciones guerrilleras¶). These agrupaciones drew a significant source of membership from among wartime political detainees released from goal in 1943 and 1944. (The regime was obliged to make these releases to make space for the new influx of political prisoners arrested under new post-war Francoist security legislation). But the prisoners were released under highly punitive parole conditions ± and many (including a number who¶d previously fought in the guerrilla corps of the Republican Army) preferred to take their chances with the guerrilla. During the Second World War, a large number of Spanish republicans, and also former International Brigaders, fought in the French resistance. In 1944 the PCE mounted an operation in France that brought together some three and a half thousand Spanish guerrilleros. They were amassed along the Franco-Spanish border, and they made a symbolic but fruitless incursion into Spain in the Valle de Arán in October and November 1944. At the same time, similar groups from North Africa made a number of landings on the southern coast of Spain (Andalusia). While these actions didn¶t directly threaten the Franco regime, they did lead to a bigger guerrilla presence inside Spain ± most notably with the agrupaciones in the north east and east (Levante-Aragón) and the southern agrupación in the area of Granada and Málaga. Guerrilla resistance during this period was geared to specific strategic goals: for example attacks on military barracks, the kidnapping of army officers and local officials, the sabotaging of communications networks and other key targets. This phase of the guerrilla resistance was endowed with a military structure. The guerrilla carried out sporadic occupations of villages where they held meetings and distributed anti-Franco news-sheets and pamphlets. From 1947 onwards, the regime accelerated its repression against the guerilla. Its acts became more violent and coordinated. At the same time, the international context of
the Cold War was unfavourable to the continuation of guerilla campaign. This phase was the beginning of the end for the guerrilla inside Spain. From here on it was a case of those guerrilleros who could, getting themselves out of Spain across the French frontier and going into exile. But that was a gruelling and difficult journey and many didn¶t make it to the frontier (they were killed by the army or the civil guard during the journey). But this acceleration in regime violence actually had a paradoxical effect for a time, producing a retrenchment in the armed resistance and indeed even a new influx of huidos, just as in 1939. This influx included other family members and those who had previously acted as go-betweens. In the last analysis, however, what sealed the fate of the guerrilla resistance to Franco was the decision of the Allies not to remove Franco militarily ± a decision that constituted an important milestone in the emergent Cold War. Between 1947 and 1952, the PCE came under the inexorable pressure of world events, including the very direction of Stalin¶s policy, and thus it began gradually demobilizing its guerrilla cadres, evacuating those it could to France. Those who remained in Spain survived as best they could. They fought desperate skirmishes with the police, but without any real hope of success. In the end, they were crushed by the state¶s security apparatus.
