CHAPTER XXIX. The long wait for July 19, 1936

When Manuel Azaña became President of the Republic on May 10, Santiago Casares Quiroga became both Prime Minister and Minister of War. Casares Quiroga responded to the conspiracy against the Republic in the same way as his predecessor: he acted oblivious. As far as he was concerned, “there’s no reason to be alarmed; the government has the situation under control.” The absurdity of this attitude became clear after July 10, when everyone saw that the government had completely lost control. The soldiers enlisted in the plot took orders only from General Mola, the leader of the rebellion who had installed his General Staff in Pamplona. When soldiers loyal to the Republic saw the ineffectiveness of the Ministry of War, they put themselves at the disposal of the workers’ organizations or political parties of their preference and prepared for the battle that everyone now believed was inevitable. Falange Española groups escalated their terrorism in an attempt to create panic among the people. Assaults on individual Left activists multiplied. They seriously injured Socialist legal expert Jiménez de Asúa, the Vice President of the Parliament, among others.

Largo Caballero had a long conversation with Casares Quiroga in Araquistáin’s house in Madrid before leaving on July 8 to attend the Congress of the International Syndical Federation in London. The Socialists emphatically warned the Prime Minister that a military coup was imminent. Casares Quiroga dismissed them as “alarmists.” [461]

A falangist group took over Radio Valencia on July 11. It broadcast: “the Falange Española is occupying the studio of Unión Radio” and ended its statement with a “For the heart!” The next day in Madrid, four gunmen shot down Assault Guard Lieutenant José Castillo, who was well-known for his leftist views. The execution was carried out on the orders of the Unión Militar Española or, according to some, falangists. [462] That night a group of Assault Guardsmen pulled Calvo Sotelo out of his home to take him to the General Office of Security. His corpse was found early the next morning in Madrid’s Eastern Cemetery.

On July 14, General Mola summoned military leaders from towns in northern Spain to his command post, where they surely concretized the final details of the rebellion.

Funerals for both Calvo Sotelo and Lieutenant Castillo took place on July 15 in Madrid. Uniformed soldiers accompanying the coffin of the former shouted “We will avenge you!” Civil Guard officers attacked workers marching with the latter, injuring several with their violent charges. General Balmes, the military leader in Las Palmas, died in an accident on July 16. Franco went there on July 17 to pay homage to his comrade-in- arms and received the false passports that he would use while traveling to Spanish Morocco via Casablanca on an English plane known as the “Dragon Rapide.” The Melilla garrison rose up that afternoon and Franco took off for Morocco moments later. The war had begun. The government published a statement saying that it had the situation “under control.”

On July 14, Durruti checked out of a hospital where he had been resting after being operated on for a hernia a few days earlier. He hadn’t recovered completely, but left nonetheless. That day he met with his Nosotros group comrades, who also made up the Barcelona Defense Committee. They told him that their plan was beginning to bear fruit. The District Defense Committees had gone into operation the previous day and there was perfect communication between them and CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth groups. Contact between the District Committees and the local Defense Committees was equally fluid.

They were in continuous contact with the Atarazanas Artillery Base through Sergeants Manzana and Gordo. They also had ongoing dialogues with several officers at the Prat military air base, who had agreed to bomb the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks as soon as the rebels took to the street. Workers from Poble Nou, Sant Andreu, and Santa Coloma would attack the barracks once the bombing began. It would be easy to arm the people if that barracks fell into workers’ hands: nearly ninety thousands rifles, dozens of machine-guns, and more than a few canons were stored there. [463] The District Defense Committees studied their military strategy over a map during a large meeting. Each district would take responsibility for the government buildings, police stations, and Civil and Assault Guard barracks in its area. Militants from the Gas and Electricity Workers’ Union would immediately occupy the main warehouses of CAMPSA (a state-owned gasoline and petroleum company). CNT and FAI defense groups would take control of the subterranean parts of the city: the sewers were ideal for ferrying reinforcements to military hotspots. Action groups from the Subway Workers’ Union would seize the subway tunnels. The Defense Committees were to allow the troops to march confidently forward when they went into the street, thus getting them as far as possible from their respective barracks. They would then block their retreat and attack, forcing them to endure heavy shootouts that would exhaust their ammunition, while also preventing the rebel units from communicating among themselves. They would let the troops get as far as the Brecha-Rondas-Plaza de la Universidad-Cataluña line, stopping Las Ramblas from falling into rebel hands at all costs.

They would vigorously defend the capital’s old quarter as well as the ports.

Each Neighborhood Committee would defend its own zone, thus making it unnecessary to move militants from one place to another. The fighters’ familiarity with one another would also limit the possibility of enemy infiltration.

On the July 15, Solidaridad Obrera reported that CNT and FAI militants had been patrolling the city the entire night, on the lookout for suspicious enemy movements. They had very few arms in their possession: only small caliber pistols and limited ammunition as well. They had some Winchesters that Estat Català forces discarded on October 6, but they were holding them in reserve, since the Generalitat’s police—who were also patrolling the streets—had been frisking people and in some cases taking their arms. The police soon returned the weapons: neither the police nor the workers wanted to spark a battle between potential allies.

That day, an individual dressed in an elegant summer suit visited Durruti. They shut themselves up in a room and spoke for a good quarter hour. When the men left, Durruti said: “It was Pérez Farràs, the Commander of the Mozos de Escuadra [trans.: the Generalitat’s autonomous police]. He came to sound us out and find out what we’re scheming. They know that they’ll suffer the same fate as they did in October without us, but they’re scared of us and don’t want to give us weapons. They’re planning to use us as cannon fodder.” [464]

An important meeting of the Defense Committees occurred on the night of July 16 at the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ social hall in El Clot. It became clear at the meeting that it was quite unlikely that the Generalitat would give arms to the CNT. Militants had to accept the idea of acquiring them by assaulting the Sant Andreu barracks, as originally planned.

According to Santillán, CNT representatives met with Generalitat Interior Minister Josep María España on July 17. They told him that if the Generalitat armed one thousand CNT militants, that the Confederation could guarantee the soldier’s defeat. España claimed that the Generalitat had no weapons to give out; maybe some pistols, at the very most. Santillán writes: “We had the distinct impression that if the politicians feared fascism, they were even more afraid of us.... On the eve of July 19, we had to focus all our energies on defending the few guns that we possessed, stopping the police from disarming our comrades who were carrying out their nightly patrols.” [465]

On July 17, censors blacked out a statement that the CNT and FAI had published in Solidaridad Obrera to orient the working class. The text was extremely important, so they printed it illegally and distributed it by hand. That night there were rumors that troops in Morocco had risen up against the Republic. The rumors were true. The evening papers made no mention of the event, although they did print a note from the government claiming that it “had the situation under control.”

That evening, members of the Maritime Transport Union stormed several merchant ships and seized their cargo of arms. They captured approximately two hundred rifles, which they immediately distributed to several unions, including the Metalworkers’ Union on the Rambla Santa Mónica. When the Catalan Interior Minister learned of the assault, España ordered Federico Escofet to recover the rifles at once. Escofet, the Generalitat’s General Commissioner of Public Order, entrusted the mission to his Chief of Services, Commander Vicente Guarner. Guarner and a company of Assault Guards went to the Metalworkers’ Union and got ready to storm the premises and disarm its occupants. Union secretary Benjamín Sánchez went out to speak with Guarner and told him in no uncertain terms that he must not move forward, unless he wanted to start a conflict between the CNT and the Assault Guard. “The Generalitat refuses to arm the people and claims that it has no weapons to distribute,” Sánchez said. “Yet when the workers show that there are arms, it sends out the police to take them. Commander, in these tragic moments, don’t you think your obsession with maintaining the principle of authority is more than a little infantile?” [466]

Commander Guarner knew perfectly well that Benjamín Sánchez was right. He had already arrested Valdés, an Assault Guard Captain, from whom he had confiscated the troops’ orders to rebel. And he also knew that the Barcelona military garrison had some six thousand men, not to mention the falangists and other rightists who might make common cause with the insurgent soldiers, whereas the Generalitat could only marshal 1,960 Security and Assault guards in reply. Furthermore, he was aware that the three thousand Civil Guardsmen under General Aranguren’s command had dubious loyalties and could easily side with the rebels. Guarner knew all this and yet—since orders are orders—he was prepared to ignite a war with the workers. Whether by chance or because someone had informed them, García Oliver and Durruti appeared on the scene. Guarner hoped that these “bosses” would be more sensitive to the delicacy of the situation. He explained to García Oliver that he had to the search building and take the rifles. Exasperated, Durruti intervened. He said: “There are times in life when it’s impossible to carry out an order, even when the person giving the order is very high up. By disobeying, man becomes civilized. Civilize yourself by making common cause with the people. Your uniform doesn’t mean anything anymore. There is no authority other than the revolutionary order and it demands that the rifles are in the workers’ hands.” [467]

Whether or not Durruti convinced him, Guarner tried to “save the prestige of authority” by accepting the dozen unserviceable riffles that they handed over to him.

The long wait for July 19, 1936 401Both Vicente Guarner and Federico Escofet put special emphasis on the matter of the rifles in the works they later wrote about the war. The first says that authorities recovered fifty or sixty rifles and the second claims that they seized all two hundred. The truth is that nothing more than twelve broken rifles left the Metalworkers’ Union and Guarner wouldn’t have found the rest even if he had raided the building, for the simple reason that they had already been distributed to the District Defense Committees. [468]

Saturday July 18 was a day of intense activity and agitated nerves. Despite all the CNT’s efforts to secure arms, they had not acquired anything of significance. Some youths had managed to get weapons by disarming the city’s night watchmen, but their six-bullet, .38 caliber guns were more for show than real fighting. The dozen gunsmiths that they planned to raid were still in reserve. And what would their stock mean against machine-guns and cannons? The only hope was to take the Sant Andreu barracks, which is where the workers were told to go.

For its part, the Generalitat took measures that might appear fitting at first glance, but actually bordered on the absurd. It emitted an order informing soldiers that they were no longer obliged to obey their officers and then backed it up with another order firing officers suspected of fascist sympathies. This was ridiculous because the soldiers were in their barracks at the mercy of their officers as well as the falagists who were pouring in. And the “fired” officers could laugh at the second edict, since they were working precisely to “fire” Lluís Companys.

At 11:30 pm, Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver were in the Catalan Interior Ministry building making a final attempt to convince España to disarm part of the Civil and Assault Guard and give weapons to the workers. While they were inside the building negotiating, the Palacio Plaza was filling with workers from Barceloneta, who came to demand weapons. There were three Assault Guard companies in the Plaza protecting the Interior Ministry. The crowd increased until it nearly filled the entire Plaza and Colón Avenue. Minister España showed how frightened he was when he begged García Oliver to say something from the balcony to calm the workers. García Oliver went to the balcony and told the port workers the same thing that the Generalitat had been saying for a week: “They have no weapons for the workers.” The people below received those words with indignation and shouted in unison: “October! October!” España, Companys, and all those holding the reigns of power understood the unmistakable meaning of their cry. But, even so, they were more afraid of the working class than the fascists. Would the workers draw pertinent lessons from the Generalitat’s stance during the night of July 18?

While the tense deliberations continued in the Interior Ministry— García Oliver speaking aggressively and Francisco Ascaso with transparent disdain—the telephone rang. España took the receiver and the paleness that immediately covered his face made it clear that he had heard something very troubling. He hung up and told the CNT men: “This can’t be! This is disorder! They tell me that CNT members are requisitioning cars and painting them with the letters of their unions! The gunsmiths have been stormed! Go calm those people!”

Durruti stared at España intently. He stepped toward him and pounded on the table that separated them. “Who do you take us for? We represent the people in the streets who are demanding arms, who are requisitioning cars and storming the gunsmiths. We’re representatives of a working class that isn’t going to go to battle defenselessly. It’s your responsibility to calm those workers, who you think of as ‘rabble.’” Durruti then turned to his comrades and said: “There’s nothing more for us to do here. Let’s go.”

When they were leaving the Interior Ministry, they passed Diego Abad de Santillán and two militants from the Construction Workers’ Union, who were also on a mission to acquire weapons. Santillán and his two companions insisted on seeing España. Their efforts were not completely fruitless: when it was announced that the rebel troops had left their barracks, an Assault officer, without asking permission from anyone, began to search the Palace’s rooms until he found a box containing one hundred pistols, which he handed over to Santillán. [469]

Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver spoke with the port workers in the street. García Oliver told them to go to Sant Andreu, but Durruti contradicted him, thinking that it would be better if they stayed there, continuing to demand arms and keeping watch over the Artillery barracks in the Docks as well as the Parque de la Ciudadela Infantry barracks.

At the last moment, General Mola made General Goded the leader of the fascist uprising in Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole. Goded was in the Balearic Islands at the time and would not arrive in Barcelona until daybreak on July 19. While Goded traveled, Cavalry General Alvaro Fernández Burriel led the rebellion. Burriel, the oldest of the generals with a command in Barcelona, established himself in the Cavalry barracks on Tarragona Street. It was there that he linked up with the other barracks and coordinated the revolt.

General Llano de la Encomienda was the Capitan General of the Region. He knew from the outset that the majority of the officers surrounding him had gone over to the conspirators and that therefore he was their prisoner. Nevertheless, he could still help the Generalitat by refusing to declare a state of emergency, which General Burriel insistently asked him to do in hopes of using the declaration as cover while he moved troops around the city. Several military leaders were in Dependencias Militares—an imposing building buried on the Ramblas-Paseo corner—who relied on the army’s bureaucratic services and took orders from Ramón Mola, the General’s brother and his representative in Catalonia. We will now review the military forces planning to rise up at dawn on July 19. [470]

Regiment number 10, of the Seventh Infantry Brigade, which General Angel San Pedro commanded. The Regiment’s barracks were in Pedralbes, under the control of Colonel Fermín Espallargas. Almost all its officers participated in the uprising. Commander López Amor took command of its two battalions after imprisoning Fermín Espallargas and San Pedro, who had remained faithful to the Republic. Given the many men on summer leaves of absence, the exact number of soldiers in the Regiment at the time is not clear. But there were at least six hundred, in addition to the falangists and rightwing youth that joined the rebels that afternoon. Its armament consisted of seventeen machine-guns and four mortars.

Regiment Number 34. Parque de la Ciudadela Barracks (on Sicilia Street). Colonel Jacobo Roldán, who supported the rebels, was in command. Half the officer corps in this barracks supported the insurgents, which later rendered it half neutral. It had approximately the same number of men and weapons as the preceding Regiment.

Second Cavalry Brigade. It was under the command of General Alvaro Fernández Burriel and the Brigade’s two Regiments had their barracks on Tarragona Street. Like the Seventh Infantry Brigade, it had approximately six hundred men, but only six machine-guns.

Regiment number 3. It was in the Lepanto Barracks, under the command of Colonel Francisco Lacasa. Almost all of its officers and also the Colonel were engaged in the rebellion. Its endowment of arms and men was more or less the same as the previous.

Artillery Brigade. Rebel General Justo Legorburu was in command. This brigade was made up by two Regiments. Regiment number 7 had its barracks in Sant Andreu and was led by Colonel José Llanas. It was composed of two groups of three batteries with four 10.5 Vickers artillery pieces each. The officer corps was split, but those supporting the rebels seized the artillery as well as machine-guns. This Brigade also had another Regiment in reserve in Mataró, which possessed sixteen artillery pieces.

The Central Artillery Station and the general armory were also in Sant Andreu, which the CNT-FAI Defense Committee believed contained around nine thousand rifles. There was later talk of thirty-five thousand rifles. In either case, there was a significant number of arms there and the Confederal Defense Committee was not wrong to think of it as the arsenal of the revolution.

Mountain Regiment number 1. It was commanded by Francisco Serra and its barracks were on Icaria Avenue (in the Docks). It had twenty-four 10.5 Skoda artillery pieces. Except for the Colonel, the entire officer corps sided with the rebels. The basic nucleus of the conspiracy worked out of this barracks, whose representative from the UME was Captain López Varela. Engineers Battalion. Its barracks were on Cortes Street, next to the Plaza de España. It had approximately four hundred men.

The Prat del Llobregat Military Air Base was commanded by Colonel Díaz Sandino, who was loyal to the Republic. It had three small squadrons with five Breguet planes each. The majority of its officers supported the Republic and the Confederal Defense Committee was in contact with some of them. Nonetheless, several fascist officers deserted with some of the planes at dawn, surely those in the best condition.

The Naval Air Force had ten Savoia hydroplanes. Except for some mechanics, the entire base supported the uprising. The Savoias that ferried Goded from Majorca to Barcelona took off from this base in the early morning hours.

Carabineros Command Headquarters. There were approximately four hundred men in this body and its barracks were on San Pablo Street. It leaned toward the rebels, but did not join the uprising because it had been surrounded immediately on July 19.

Civil Guard. It had three thousand men in all of Catalonia and was under the command of General Aranguren, who declared his loyalty to the Republic. In Catalonia there were two Tercios (a Tercio is the equivalent of a Regiment). The nineteenth was garrisoned on Barcelona’s Ausias March Street and under the command of Colonel Antonio Escobar. It was made up of two commands (the equivalent of Battalions) of four companies. Colonel Francisco Brotons led Tercio number 3 and although it was spread throughout Catalonia, it did have a squad in Barcelona whose size we do not know. There was also a Cavalry Command with three Squadrons of 150 men each, whose barracks were on Consejo de Ciento Street. These forces supported the rebels and, like the Carabineros, were a constant preoccupation for the revolutionaries from 5:00 am to 2:00 pm on July 19. The Generalitat, in hopes of controlling these forces, ordered General Aranguren to concentrate them in the Palacio Plaza.

The majority of the military forces scattered throughout Catalonia backed the fascists. General Goded called upon them to march on Barcelona at 3:00 pm on July 19, but the people’s clear successes by that time undermined their initiative and local Revolutionary Committees had also barricaded them in their barracks.

What forces could the Generalitat deploy against the rebels? Vicente Guarner answers the question:

We were immensely inferior; the “iron of our armed squadrons” was little more than filings. We estimated that we were facing approximately five thousand disciplined but poorly led men, with twenty-four artillery pieces, forty-eight machine-guns, and twenty heavy mortars. Against this we had 1,960 Security and Assault Guards, supported by sixteen machine-guns and eight light mortars. The Civil Guard’s loyalty was still uncertain and our local companies of Security guards ... were out of training militarily.... We had no hand grenades or even tear gas.... The outlook could not have been more bleak.[471]

The Generalitat’s General Staff—Escofet, Guarner, and Commander Arrando—drew up their plans to defend Barcelona on the basis of tactics that they thought the rebels would apply. Their defense would turn on the following key points: the “Cinc d’Ors”—where they hoped to concentrate all the enemy’s forces—and on protecting the Catalan Interior Ministry against the artillery troops and infantry from the Parque de la Ciudadela sector. They scattered companies of Assault Guards around the city: some in the Plaza de España; some in the port, to protect Customs and confront Atarazanas; and others at the Sant Andreu barracks. There were also some troops on Urquinaona and in the Plaza de Cataluña protecting the Generalitat and the General Station of Public Order. When he received this plan, Díaz Sandino said “given the magnitude of the rebel forces and the weakness of our own, the President of the Generalitat, his advisers, and upper-level Catalan functionaries should go to the Prat del Llobregat airbase.” [472] With morale like that, and clearly inadequate military resources, they would surely face a repetition of the October 6 defeat if the working class did not intervene. And yet during the week preceding the rebel uprising, authorities did their best to demoralize the workers, when not confronting them with arms in hand, such as during the July 18 episode at the Metalworkers’ Union.

There is a striking difference between the defensive plan that the Generalitat embraced and that applied by the workers from the Confederal Defense Committee. The latter adopted a strategy based on the workers’ strengths. Against classical military tactics, they responded with urban guerrilla warfare, which focused on wearing down the enemy, isolating its units, and defeating those units one by one. The workers assumed that the soldiers would try to divide the western workers’ districts from the eastern industrial zone in order to dominate the central part of the city, which contained the government buildings, the telephone exchange, and the radio transmitters. To block this, workers would distract the rebel units while stopping them from making contact either among themselves or with their barracks.

The Generalitat’s plan was purely defensive. And its efforts to protect the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks were clearly designed to prevent the workers from storming the site and seizing its weapons. They took that measure as soon as they learned that the Confederal Defense Committee wanted aviators to bomb the Barracks. As we will see below, the aviators’ bombardment was unnecessary by the time it took place, since the workers were already in control of the situation and the rebels still fighting had no hope of victory. They continued resisting mainly because of pressure from their officers, who preferred death before falling to the revolutionaries. Around three in the morning on July 19, Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver visited the District Defense Committees and the unions designated as meeting places for the workers: the Woodworkers’ Union on Rosales Street at the Paralelo; the Construction Workers’ Union on Mercaders Street in the middle of the Santa Catalina neighborhood; the Transport and Metalworkers’ Union on the Rambla Santa Mónica in the heart of Fifth District, and the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union in the midst of the large Sant Martí workers’ neighborhood. After completing their inspection, they went from the Manufacturing and Textile Workers’ Union down San Juan de Malta Street to 276 Paseo de Pujadas. That was where Gregorio Jover lived, whose third floor apartment had become a gathering place for the Nosotros group. Everyone let out a sigh of relief when they entered. García Oliver and Ascaso were exhausted and sat down. Durruti was the only one who continued to stand; fatigue seemed to increase his energy. He teased his weary friends: “These guys won’t be fighting any battles today!”

His joke fell on deaf ears. Everyone was convinced that this was the moment that they had been waiting for. No one said a word while Jover distributing spiced sausage sandwiches and glasses of red wine. Everyone ate except for Ascaso, who drank a coffee and nervously smoked a cigarette. Languid music drifted in from an old radio, but then stopped suddenly when the broadcaster broke in. Everyone listened attentively to what he might say. It was an anguished warning to the people, saying that the fascists would soon rise up. It was nearly four in the morning. Durruti grew somber and looked at the people in the room: Ascaso, nervously puffing a cigarette as if in a rush to light another: García Oliver, who was looking at Aurelio Fernández, surprised by the fact that he was wearing his customary fancy suit, with a white handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket; Ricardo Sanz was devouring his sandwich while holding a half glass of wine in his right hand; Gregorio Jover, thin, with a gaunt face, coming and going from the kitchen to the dining room; Antonio Ortiz, running his hand through his hair repeatedly, trying to order his rebellious black locks; and, finally, “El Valencia,” the oldest, a new member of the group, who was as nervous as Ascaso and also smoking cigarette after cigarette. What did Durruti think after this passing glance? He could have only wondered who among them would survive the battle that was about to begin.

García Oliver broke the silence: “Is the machine-gun mounted?”

The machine-gun was an old Hotchkiss that had been extracted piece- by-piece from the Atarazanas barracks.

“Yes,” someone responded. “It’s already installed on the truck. There’s nothing more to bring down but the things in the room.”

Those “things” were two machine-gun rifles and several repeating Winchesters. Silence descended again. It was a heavy silence, laden with worry. There were some discreet knocks on the door and then the news: “The troops are beginning to leave the Pedralbes barracks.” Everyone jumped as if yanked by a string and grabbed a weapon. There were two trucks in the street, pointing towards Poble Nou and escorted by a dozen militants. The men of the Nosotros group divided themselves between the trucks. The one in front carried the machine-gun and a black and red flag, which began to flutter as the vehicle moved forward. While the vehicles drove toward the center of Barcelona, groups of workers who had been patrolling all night greeted them with a shout that would be heard in every corner of the city within a few hours: “CNT-FAI!” [473]

News of the troops’ departure reached the Palacio Plaza, where thousands of workers were still futilely demanding weapons. They stopped shouting for a moment and everyone stared at one another. There was a sudden quietness, which the hasty departure of Santillán and his two comrades did not interrupt, as they ran off with the celebrated hundred pistols that had been found so opportunely. An Assault Guard looked at the crowd and then looked at himself. He had a rifle in his hand and a pistol on his belt. He didn’t need both weapons and there were so many unarmed men. He took his pistol from his belt and gave it to the person standing closest to him. “Take it,” he said. “We’ll fight together!” [474]

It was 4:45 am on what would be the longest day in the lives of thousands of men and women. At that moment, all the factory sirens began to scream out simultaneously, just as the CNT and its District Defense Committees had planned. The hour of struggle was ringing...