Millán
Astray, the son of
a lawyer, was
born in La Coruña, Spain,
on 5th July 1879. Astray entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo on
30th August 1894 and graduated as a second lieutenant two years later.
After spending six months in an infantry regiment stationed in Madrid
he went to the Escuela Superior de Guerra to study for the general
staff diploma.
In November 1896
Astray left his course in order to volunteer for active service in
the Philippines where a nationalist rebellion against Spanish rule
was taking place. The following month he became a national hero when
he successfully led thirty men against two thousand rebels at San
Rafael.
After winning
three medals for bravery, Astray returned to the Escuela
Superior de Guerra in
June 1897. He graduated in 1899 and by January 1905 had reached the
rank of captain.
In 1910 Astray
joined the staff of the Infantry Academy of Toledo where he taught
military history and tactics. He missed the excitement of warfare
and in August 1912 he was transferred to Morroco.
Astray remained in Africa until 1917 when he returned to Madrid. The
following year he began to argue that Spain needed a mercenary army
to serve in Spain's colonies. Tovar Marcoleta liked the idea and in
1919 sent him to study the French Foreign Legion in Algeria.
Astray was promoted
to Lieutenant Colonel and in January 1920 was named head of the Spanish
Foreign Legion (Tercio de Extranjeros). He appointed Francisco
Franco as
his second in command. The first volunteers arrived in Ceuta in October
1920. Astray told his new recruits "you have lifted yourselves
from among the dead - for don't forget that you were dead, that your
lives were over. You have come here to live a new life for which you
must pay with death. You have come here to die. Since you crossed
the Straits, you have no mother, no girlfriend, no family; from today
all that will be provided by the Legion." Astray added: "Death
in combat is the greatest honour. You die only once. Death arrives
without pain and is not so terrible as it seems. The most horrible
thing is to live as a coward."
The Tercio de
Extranjeros quickly developed a reputation for brutality. Astray and
Franco encouraged the killing and mutilation of prisoners. Arturo
Barea, who served under Astray in Morroco
in 1921, later wrote: "When
it attacked, the Tercio knew no limits to its vengeance. When it left
a village, nothing remained but fires and the corpses of men, women
and children."
Astray insisted on leading
his men into battle. On 17th September 1921 he was hit in the chest
by an enemy bullet. He returned to action three weeks later and on
10th January 1922 he received a bad leg wound.
In 1923 Astray was replaced
by Francisco
Franco as commander
of the Tercio
de Extranjeros. Astray
was sent to France to study the organization
of the French
Army.
The following year he joined the staff of the High Commissioner in
Morroco.
On 26th October 1924 he was ambushed by local rebels and his wounds
led to him having his left arm amputated.
Astray returned as commander
of the Tercio de Extranjeros in February 1926.
He continued to lead his men into battle and the following month he
lost his right eye when a bullet hit him in the face. In June 1927
he was promoted to Brigadier General and was given command of the
Ceuta-Tetuán district. In January 1930 he was attached to the
Ministry of War and eventually became a member of the Supreme War
Council.
Astray held extreme right-wing
political opinions. He fully supported the dictatorship of Miguel
Primo de Rivera and was dismayed by the abdication of Alfonso
XIII and
the establishment of a Republican government. In October 1934 he supervised
the use of the Tercio de Extranjeros to repress
the left-wing insurrection in Asturias. He later told a journalist
that he was involved "a frontier war against socialism, communism
and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism".
Involved in the military
uprising against the Popular
Front government in July 1936. On the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War Astray
was recruited by General Francisco
Franco to join
his staff in Seville. Soon afterwards he was placed in charge of the
Nationalist propaganda operation. Astray also played an important
role in persuading other senior officers that Franco should become
commander of the Nationalist
Army and chief
of state of Spain.
In his speeches Astray
openly claimed that he wanted to establish a fascist government in
Spain. At a speech in Salamanca on 12th October 1936 he told the audience:
"Catalonia and the Basque Country are two cancers in the body
of the nation! Fascism, Spain's remedy, comes to exterminate them,
slicing healthy, living flesh like a scalpel."
During the Second
World War Astray was a great supporter of Nazi
Germany. He encouraged men to join the Blue Division that fought
with the German
Army on
the Eastern Front. Astray hoped that an Axis victory would lead to
a new Spanish Empire in Africa.
After the war Astray went
into retirement. Millán
Astray died
of a heart-attack on 1st January 1954.
(1)
Millán
Astray, speech made at meeting of new recruitsto
the
Spanish Foreign Legion (10th October 1920)
You
have lifted yourselves from among the dead - for don't forget that
you were dead, that your lives were over. You have come here to live
a new life for which you must pay with death. You have come here to
die. Since you crossed the Straits, you have no mother, no girlfriend,
no family; from today all that will be provided by the Legion.
Death in combat
is the greatest honour. You die only once. Death arrives without pain
and is not so terrible as it seems. The most horrible thing is to
live as a coward.
(2)
Arturo
Barea served under Millán
Astray in
Morocco
in 1921. He later
wrote about Astray in his book La Forja de un Rebelde
(1951)
Millán Astray's entire body underwent
an hysterical transfiguration. His voice thundered and sobbed and
howled. He spat into the faces of these men all their misery, their
shame, their filth, their crimes, and then he dragged them along in
fanatical fury to a sense of chivalry, to a renunciation of all hope
beyond that of dying a death which would wash away the stains of their
cowardice in the splendor of heroism.
When it attacked, the Tercio
knew no limits to its vengeance. When it left a village, nothing remained
but fires and the corpses of men, women and children. Thus, I witnessed
the villages of Bern
Aros razed to the ground in the spring of 1921. Whenever a legionary
was murdered on a lonely cross-country march, the throats of
all the men in the neighbouring villages were cut unless the assailant
came forward."
(3)
Millán
Astray
was interviewed by Rafael Abella about his experiences as commander
of the Tercio
de Extranjeros.
My war cry is 'Legionaries to fight, Legionarios
to die'. And when we Legionarios fight and we see death nearby, we
sing the 'Hymn of the Legion' and when we are happy and content, we
also sing it because in the 'Hymn of the Legion' can be found the
purest essences of our soul: not just in the words but in the music,
in the singing of the rhythm and in the vibrant notes of the bugles.
That is why, when I undergo painful treatment for my wounds in hospital,
I place a piano in the next room and have a Legionario play the 'Hymn
of the Legion' and 'El Novio de la Muerte' so as not to feel the pain.
Once, when they had just amputated my arm, the wounded Legionarios
who were in the hospital threw themselves from their beds, whether
they could walk or not, and with the latter dragging themselves along
the floor, they all came to my room to sing me the 'Hymn of the Legion'.
I also jumped out of bed and, standing rigidly to attention, I sang
with them. Another time, when I was being taken on a stretcher
from one hospital to another, wounded by a cruel bullet which had
gone through my temple, as we went through Riffien where the Legion
has its headquarters, everyone came out to sing the 'Hymn of War'
and I jumped from the stretcher and I sang with them.
(4)
Millán
Astray, speech in Salamanca (12th October 1936)
Catalonia and the Basque Country are two cancers
in the body of the nation! Fascism, Spain's remedy, comes to exterminate
them, slicing healthy, living flesh like a scalpel.
(5)
Miguel
de Unamuno, reply to speech made by Millán
Astray,
in Salamanca (12th
October 1936)
Much has been said here about the international
war in defence of Christian civilization; I have done the same myself
on other occasions. But no, our war is only an uncivil war. To win
is not to convince, and it is necessary to convince and that cannot
be done by the hatred which has no place for compassion. There has
been talk too of Catalans and Basques, calling them the anti-Spain.
Well, with the same justification could they say the same of you.
Here is the Bishop, himself a Catalan, who teaches you Christian doctrine
which you don't want to learn. And I, who am a Basque, I have spent
my life teaching you the Spanish language, which you do not know.
General Millan Astray
is a war invalid. It is not necessary to say this in a whisper. Cervantes
was too. But extremes cannot be taken as the norm. Unfortunately,
today there are too many invalids. And soon there will be more if
God does not help us. It pains me to think that General Millan Astray
might dictate the norms of mass psychology. An invalid who lacks the
spiritual grandeur of Cervantes, who was a man, not a superman, virile
and complete despite his mutilations, an invalid, as I said, who lacks
that superiority of spirit, is often made to feel better by seeing
the number of cripples around him grow. General Millan Astray would
like to create a new Spain
in his own image, a negative creation without doubt. And so he would
like to see a mutilated Spain
You will win but you will
not convince. You will win because you have more than enough brute
force; but you will not convince, because to convince means to persuade.
And to persuade you need something that you lack: reason and right
in the struggle. It seems to me useless to beg you to think of Spain.
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