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The Civil War did not end when the voice of the actor Fernando Fernández de Córdoba sounded on the radio, at 10:30 am on April 1, 1939, with the usual emphasis and enchantment: «Captive and disarmed the Red Army, the national troops have reached their last military objectives ”. During the 1940s, the actions of the anti-Franco opposition were marked not only by the Second World War and the repression of the dictatorship, but also by the confrontations, betrayals and hatred that anarchists and communists professed in exile. and socialists after being defeated by Franco.
It was war after war, the same one that had been brewing since 1937 in Spain, when two distinct factions began to emerge on the Republican side.
The first bet on peace and an armistice with Franco, headed by then-president Manuel Azaña and supported by the Republican Left and Republican Union parties, the Basque and Catalan nationalists and a sector of the PSOE. The second, led by Juan Negrín, appointed president in May, was in favor of prolonging the conflict and had the help of the communists and another part of the socialists, believing that the Second World War would break out soon and that the allies would come to their aid. .
In the early morning of March 5 to 6, 1939, General Manuel Matallana received the famous call from Segismundo Casado to inform him that he had risen against President Negrín himself, who at that point had only the support of the Soviets and the Communist Party. When he found out, the latter took the phone from him and said directly to the coup colonel: “You are dismissed.” And he replied: «Look, Negrín, that no longer matters. You are no longer a government, nor do you have the strength or prestige to sustain yourself and, even less, to stop us. The die is cast and I am no longer backing down.
Insurmountable divergences
The gap became insurmountable and, shortly after Casado’s call, three planes left for France with the last constitutional government of the Second Republic. The Sevillian edition of ABC, in the hands of the national side, titled: ‘The red zone revolts against Negrín and he flees to Toulouse accompanied by Álvarez del Vayo’. Two days later, he added: “According to the Reds of Miaja and Casado, they have completely defeated the Reds of Negrin and Stalin.” For Dolóres Ibárruri, ‘La Pasionaria’, an important leader of the PCE, “it is difficult to imagine a more cowardly and elusive vermin than the colonel.”
The war between the leaders of the defeated side continued after the war and, above all, in the late 1940s, when the entire opposition to Franco was demoralized as a result of the consolidation of the dictatorship. This fact accentuated the divisions among the nearly 500,000 refugees who left Spain. Among them, the vast majority of political and union leaders, senior officials in the Republican Administration and intellectuals. That is, those who had greater ideological preparation and more political experience.
“Many of them knew each other perfectly, for many years, so friendships and personal enmities, along with political differences, were transferred to exile. Also the leaderships of the Spanish parties and unions, as well as the main leaders of the republican institutions, were in France in precarious conditions since April 1939. The most urgent task at that time was to provide aid to the refugees “, explains Borja de Piquer in his book ‘The Franco dictatorship’ (Criticism, 2021).
The fight for refugees
As tough as it may seem, the confrontations also led to this humanitarian and solidarity task with their own. In March 1939, the Spanish Republican Evacuation Service (SERE) was created in Paris, at the initiative of Negrin, with the aim of helping exiles who were in France with financial subsidies and, above all, to facilitate their transfer. to other countries. This initiative caused a great controversy, since the SERE, financed with funds from the Republican Government, was denounced for practicing a sectarian policy and favoring the negristas and the communists.
For this reason, in the summer, Indalecio Prieto’s supporters created a parallel and rival body, the Junta de Auxilio a los Republicanos Españoles (JARE). This second organization used as a source of financing the so-called “treasure of Vita”, the old Giralda yacht of Alfonso XIII that transported jewels, works of art and other requisitioned objects, which were valued at 50 million dollars and fell into the hands of the prietistas since its arrival in Veracruz on March 23, 1939. More than 80 years, however, the exact load of the sailboat and where it went is still one of the great enigmas of the Civil War.
JARE, in turn, created two centers: one in Mexico, run by Prieto himself, and another in Paris, chaired by the Catalanist Lluís Nicolau D’Olwer. The SERE had the participation of a wide range of political forces: Republican Left, Republican Union, PNV, ACR, ERC, CNT and FAI. The division and chaos could not be greater, where this service transferred some 13,000 Spaniards to America in 1940, that is, 80% of those who arrived in America that year.
Embezzlement
“Both the political and economic action of the SERE, as well as that of the JARE, was involved in harsh polemics over misappropriation of funds and political favoritism that did nothing but show the notable political division of the Spanish Republicans,” says Piquer. It was obvious that the forces of this side in exile were highly conditioned by the tensions and confrontations inherited from the Civil War, which increased after the defeat. The division of the anti-Franco regime was a fundamental political factor for its future, since it weakened its already reduced capacity to influence before the allied powers and hindered the effectiveness of its action within Spain, “adds the historian.
One sign of this weakness was the scant support for Negrín’s attempt to continue presiding over the government in exile in the hope of having some capacity for action during World War II. In fact, he did not succeed due to the refusal of the majority of the exile forces to recognize the communist leader. This was made clear with the confrontation between this and Diego Martínez Barrio, acting president of the Republic after the resignation of Manuel Azaña, since he intended to present himself as the sole depositary of republican legality.
To all this we must add the internal crisis in which almost all the republican political and union groups lived. The PSOE suffered a clear fragmentation, since the followers of Indalecio Prieto, those of Largo Caballero and those of Negrín openly hated and criticized each other. In the CNT the supporters of participation in the Popular Front governments and the defenders of a return to apolitical acratism were at odds. The chaos and violence was important, and it was on the rise after the German invasion of France, which favored the consolidation of the factions.
The nationalists
The defeat had also led to a radicalization of nationalist positions, both on the part of the Basque and Catalan parties, largely as a reaction to the action, described as “authoritarian and centralist”, of the Negrín government during the last months of the conflict. . In the case of the Basque Country, this attitude implied a regrouping around the Lehendakari José Antonio Aguirre, his government and the Basque Nationalist Party itself, but in the case of the Catalan politicians in exile the division was evident and, furthermore, there was hardly any financial autonomy. The president of the Generalitat himself, Lluís Companys, was the subject of numerous censures by prominent militants of the Republican Esquerra itself.
What is contradictory about this entire ‘war’ is that, while the exile leaders externalized their confrontations with debates about the responsibilities of defeat, with the most ferocious accusations and recriminations, inside Spain, with enormous difficulties and in total Underground, new groups of anti-Franco militants were risking their lives in order to rebuild the political and union groups. Although his intentions never came to fruition.
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