Málaga,
a province in southern Spain, was very strongly in favour of the Popular
Front government. The city of Málaga,
had a population of 100,000 people, was
largely under the control of the Anarcho-Syndicalists
(CNT) at the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War. The province was cut off from the rest of Republican
Spain in the first few weeks of the war and suffered from aerial attacks
from the Condor
Legion.
On 17th January 1937, General
Gonzalo
Queipo de Llano and
the Nationalist
Army launched
an attack on Málaga.
It eventually fell to the Nationalists on 8th February. Over the next
few weeks an estimated 4,000 Republicans were executed.
(1)
Manchester Guardian (12th August
1936)
One
day about the beginning of July I was walking down the principal street
in Malaga. As I passed the Club Mercantil an old gentleman whom I
know slightly came to me and in a state of great excitement exclaimed:
'Good news, good news. Within a fortnight Calvo Sotelo (the monarchist
leader) will be King of Spain.'
Then
on July 12 Calvo Sotelo was taken from his house by night and shot.
There is some mystery in this assassination. The usual reason given
for it is that it was committed by the Storm Troops or republican
police as a reprisal for the murder of one of their officers the day
before by Fascists. It is also said that it was done on the orders
of those who wished to precipitate a rising of the Right, as they
considered that was the only way to a Communist revolution. The one
thing that seems certain is that the Government, which was extremely
anxious to avoid trouble, had nothing to do with it.
It was decided by the rebel generals to utilise the feeling of indignation
which the assassination had caused among their own partisans. The
rising, which I am told had been arranged for July 25, therefore broke
out on the evening of July 18 in Spain. It had begun on the previous
day in Morocco.
What
happened in Malaga was this. At five o'clock on the evening of July
18 a company of infantry marched out of the barracks and proceeded,
with bands playing, towards the centre of the town. There was already
great tension, since the news of the rising in Morocco had become
known. As they marched the soldiers were asked where they were going.
'To proclaim a state of war.' This is the legal procedure in such
cases, and the soldiers thought that it was by order of the Government.
The Governor's office was rung up, and it was learned that no such
order had been given. This news quickly spread among the bystanders.
The company had reached the Custom offices. Suddenly a workman stepped
forward, saluted with the clenched fist, and cried 'Viva la Republica!'
The officer in command drew his revolver and shot him. This was the
signal. The Storm Troops on the steps of the Custom-house opened fire.
Workmen from behind trees and Fascists from windows joined in. The
troops tried to storm the Customhouse But this they failed to do,
and after a great deal of firing they were driven into the Calle Larios,
the main shopping street of the city, where they were left alone.
Meanwhile the Governor had released the soldiers from their duty to
their officers, and they began to stream out of the barracks into
the town. They were the less disposed to fight for having been inoculated
two days before against typhoid. Some of them approached the pickets
of the rebel company. One by one the men slunk away till only one
sentry was left. The officers got back to the barracks, where they
were taken prisoners. Apart from isolated Fascists, who continued
sniping from the roofs - and this did not altogether cease for two
days, - the fighting was over. What seems rather rather odd considering
the tens of thousands of rounds let off, less than twenty were killed
on that night. On both sides they were bad shots.
At
dawn the workmen began to stream out of their quarters of the city.
Brandishing revolvers and red flags, singing the 'Internationale,'
and making a strange rhythmical sound- 'Uh-uh-uh,' which those who
heard it told me was most terrifying, - they marched into the Calle
Larios. Selecting particular houses, sometimes those from which snipers
fired at them, sometimes those of people particularly hated or known
to be concerned in this movement, they began to set fire to them.
It was done methodically. The house was first searched, householders
on either side were warned, efforts were made to prevent the fire
from spreading. In this way half the houses in the Calle Larios were
burnt, about twenty houses in other parts of the town and in the garden
suburb to the east of the city some thirty or forty villas. But no
churches or convents. These burnings went on all day until about midnight,
and then, apart from a small recrudescence, stopped. No one was killed
and there was no looting.
A
grocer's shop, for example, was broken into: the hams, wines, and
liqueurs were piled in the street and set fire to. The workmen, many
of whom must have had hungry families at home, watched them burn.
I asked one of them why they did not send the food to their union
and distribute it. 'No,' he replied, 'Spanish workmen do not steal.
They have too much sense of honour.' If one is horrified at the material
destruction - and much of it is, of course, perfectly stupid, - one
should not forget the provocation.
(2)
Manchester Guardian (31st August
1936)
Life
in Malaga goes on calmly enough on the surface. There are, of course,
the burned houses and the flags, and one sees fewer well-dressed people
than in ordinary times.
Only foreigners wear a
tie, for ties are now the sign that one is a "senorito."
The letters U.G.T., C.N.T., U.H.P., F.A.I., and a good many more denoting
the various parties are painted on walls, on cars and lorries, on
trees, on any surface that will take them. One cannot buy a melon
in the market-place that has not got some initials scratched on it.
There are also a good many militia about, dressed in their new uniforms
of blue cotton overalls with red armlets.
The Committee system which
come into existence in Spain when popular feeling, impatient of corrupt
and incompetent bureaucratic methods, demands some outlet in action.
But there is one committee new to Spain - the Committee of Public
Health and Safety, - which came into existence on the day on which
the Governor left the city, the 12th of this month. It is the Spanish
equivalent of the Russian Cheka.
Here is a brief description
of the workings of the committees in general. At the head is the Comité
de Enlace, or Union, which decides the general policy. It is composed
of twenty members, one of whom is the Governor, who seems otherwise
to have only nominal powers, and it supervises all the other committees,
those of Supply, of Labour, or Transport, of War, of Public Health
and Safety, and so on. All the various parties of the Left, from Republicans
to Anarchists, sit on these committees, and my impression of their
work is that they are remarkably efficient. The ordinary machinery
of Spanish local government could never have done half as much.
The Committee of Public
Health and Safety investigates charges of hostility to the regime,
provides safe conducts, organises search parties for wanted people,
and shoots them. In five days it shot well over a hundred people in
Malaga alone. To begin with it shot some thirty prisoners who were
kept on a ship in the harbour. Some of these were senior police officers
who refused to join the Government; others were prominent people of
the Right; one was a marquesa caught using a private transmitting
set. They were taken to a cemetery and shot. Then came the people
who were dragged out of their houses at night, put in cars, driven
off to some quiet road, and killed there. Their only crime as a rule
was affiliation to the Ceda, the Right Catholic party, or their having
offended some workman or other. Some of these people have been killed
with shocking violence. One I saw had his head bashed in; another
who had not died at the first volley had had his throat cut; others
had their fingers, ears, or noses sliced off, after death, of course;
they are cut off to be taken away as trophies.
The men who do this belong
to the F.A.I., the anarchist organisation which is so extended in
Barcelona and Saragossa and also provides the shock troops and gunmen
for the Fascist party, Falange Espanola. They buy them by giving them
work at good wages, with extra payment for assassinations, and as
the membership of the Falange is secret they often remain at the same
time both Fascists and anarchists.
But there has been a great
change in the last few days. The anarchist bands who were dragging
harmless people out of their houses after midnight and shooting them
have been put down. Some have been shot, and militia patrol the streets
and have orders to fire on any cars with armed men in them whom they
see about after midnight. No one can be arrested and no house searched
without a warrant signed by the Governor. The Committee of Public
Safety have advisory powers only.
Another change is that
red flags have been forbidden, and, except in some of the poorer quarters,
the only colours now to be seen are the Republican. The explanation
of this is that there has been a tightening up of the "Popular
Front" in Madrid. The Governor of Malaga, who had just returned
from a conference there, told me that an agreement had been arrived
at between the Republican parties and the Socialist and Communist
parties, with all their affiliated bodies, by which any form of Communism
or dictatorship of the proletariat was entirely ruled out.
As soon as the war was
over a Government would be formed of the Republican and Socialist
parties, a Government much of the Left, of course, but not unfavourable
to the middle classes, who are to a considerable extent supporting
the Government. It is thought that the Syndicalists (especially the
more conservative C.N.T.) would not oppose such an arrangement, and
the conversations I have had with Syndicalist leaders in Malaga would
seem to bear this out. What they would fight would be any increased
form of centralisation or any dictatorship.
It seems hardly worth while, in the shambles that Spain is becoming,
to deny any stories of atrocities. Yet I would like to say that reports
published in the English papers of nuns led about naked in the streets
of Malaga are the purest invention; on the contrary, they were taken
either to the Town Hall for safety or to their own houses and were
treated with perfect respect throughout. Sisters of Charity still
go about the streets in their uniforms. Those killed are killed brutally
but quickly; the truth by itself, without ornaments, is bad enough.
Yesterday some bombs were dropped in Malaga. A tank of oil and a smaller
supply of petrol were set on fire, making a prodigious blaze, but
other bombs that fell on a popular quarter killed about forty people
and wounded a hundred and fifty, mostly women and children. If Germans
had been living all over London during the last war and if the whole
of the police and almost every soldier had been at the front I think
there might have been some lynchings after air raids. And, in fact,
a mob marched that evening to the prison, took out forty-five prisoners,
and shot them. Those who point to atrocities of this sort on the Government
side often forget the provocation and the circumstances. When soldiers
and police have to go to the front because other soldiers and police
have rebelled, who is left to keep order among an enraged population?
(3)
Claude
Cockburn, The
Daily Worker (8th February, 1937)
When
the church bells ring in Malaga that means the Italian and German
aeroplanes are coming over. While I was there they came twice and
three times a day. The horror of the civilian bombing is even worse
in Malaga than in Madrid. The place is so small and so terribly exposed.
When the bells begin ringing
and you see people who have been working in the harbour or in the
market place, or elsewhere in the open, run in crowds, you know that
they are literally running a race against death.
But the houses in Malaga
are mostly low and rather flimsy, and without cellars. Where the cliffs
come down to the edge of the town, the people make for the rocks and
caves in which those who can reach them take refuge. Others rush bounding
up the hillside above the town.
Those in the town, with
an air of infinite weariness, wait behind the piles of sandbags which
have been set up in front of
the doorways of the apartment blocks. Though they are not safe from
bombs falling on the houses, they are relatively protected from an
explosion in the street and from the bullets of the machine-guns.
Sometimes you can see
the aeroplane machine-gunner working the gun as the plane swoops along
above the street.
If you were to imagine,
however, that this terribly hammered town is in a state of panic you
would be wrong. Nothing I have seen in this war has impressed me more
than the power of the Spanish people's resistance to attack than the
attitude of the people as seen in Malaga.
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