Kitabı oku: «A People Betrayed», sayfa 12

Severiano Martinez Anido, the brutal civil governor of Barcelona.

6
From Colonial Disaster to Dictatorship, 1921–1923

Already weakened by disorder in Barcelona, the credibility of the establishment was rocked by the overwhelming defeat of Spanish forces by Moroccan tribesmen at Annual in June 1921. Hostilities had broken out in 1919 after a lengthy period of inaction occasionally interrupted by skirmishes. Peace had been maintained largely by a culture of bribing tribal chieftains which fostered venality and complacence among the Spanish officer corps. While there was no fighting, there was gambling, recourse to prostitutes and dubious moneymaking schemes. These ranged from selling equipment to the tribesmen, via charging the government for the wages of fictitious native mercenaries, to conspiring with local tradesmen to cheat on materials used for road-building projects.1 When systematic local resistance by the indigenous population began, the Spanish occupying forces were as poorly armed and trained as they had been in 1909. The most threatening rebellion was led by El Raisuni, the charismatic bandit chief of the Beni-Aros kabila (tribe) and leader of the Berbers of the north-western area of Jibala.2

The colonial occupiers were vulnerable because they held some important towns but little of their hinterland. The towns were linked by chains of wooden blockhouses, garrisoned by platoons of twenty-one men who lived in appallingly isolated conditions and whose morale was undermined by the uncertainty of the arrival of water, food and firewood every few days. The senseless loss of life saw popular hostility in Spain intensify and Madrid ever more reluctant to sink resources into a colonial war. The government had no stomach for anything beyond action in the immediate area around the two coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This led to a deep division between politicians opting for a defensive policy of guarding the towns and the Africanist officer corps anxious to see the full-scale occupation of the Rif. Things improved in late 1919 when a new High Commissioner, General Dámaso Berenguer, began a long-term policy of slow occupation, fanning out from Ceuta. Part of his strategy was a commitment to pacifying the colony by means of negotiation with the tribes.3

One of his policy’s greatest triumphs was the occupation, on 14 October 1920, of El Raisuni’s headquarters, the picturesque mountain town of Xauen, the ‘Sacred City’. However, the basic problem of controlling the marauding tribes between Xauen and Tetuán in the north and El Araich (Larache) to the west involved a ruinously expensive policing operation. Among those officers who thought that the answer was rapid full-scale occupation was Berenguer’s friend the hotheaded Commander-in-Chief, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. He was a favourite of Alfonso XIII, who encouraged his foolhardy temerity.4 While Berenguer concentrated on squeezing El Raisuni’s territory in the west, the impetuous Silvestre engaged in a more ambitious, indeed reckless, campaign in early 1921, moving swiftly westward from Melilla to occupy Monte Arruit (Al Aaroui) 40 kilometres to the south. This advance into inaccessible and hostile territory brought him into conflict with Abd el-Krim, the aggressive leader of the Beni-Urriaguel kabila of the Rif, who had begun to unify the other Berber tribes of that mountain region. In the third week of July 1921, Abd el-Krim inflicted a massive defeat on Silvestre’s forces near Melilla.5

Beginning at the village of Annual, position after position fell in a domino effect over a period of three weeks, which saw the Spanish occupation rolled back as far as Melilla itself. As the Spanish troops fled, enthusiastic tribesmen joined the revolt. Garrison after garrison was slaughtered. The deficiencies of the poorly fed and equipped Spanish forces were brutally exposed.6 Those deficiencies are all the more shocking given that in 1921 the military budget absorbed more than 35 per cent of the total budget of the state. The inefficiency of national politics was matched by the military inefficiency reflected in the excessive, indeed macrocephalic, size of the officer corps in relation both to the numbers of rank-and-file troops and to Spain’s realistic military needs and capacity. There were more generals and fewer artillery pieces per 1,000 men than in the armies of Rumania, Montenegro or Portugal. There was an officer for every four rank-and-file soldiers. Accordingly, 70 per cent of the total military budget was absorbed by officers’ salaries, ensuring that equipment was not modernized.7

Spain’s long war in Morocco was of benefit only to those who had business interests in the protectorate, not least Alfonso XIII. The corollary of that was the undermining of social support for the monarchy. Hostility to the African adventure intensified popular hostility not only to the army but to all the institutions of the Restoration system.8 The local tribes had been provoked by the brutality of the occupiers and now there were horrific revenge massacres at outposts near Melilla, Dar Drius, Monte Arruit and Nador. Within a few weeks, more than 9,000 Spanish soldiers had died and huge quantities of war materiel were lost. Silvestre was thought to have committed suicide. The tribesmen were on the outskirts of a panic-stricken Melilla. However, too preoccupied with looting, they failed to capture it, unaware that the town was virtually undefended.9 Over the next two years, the territory was clawed back but the question was now starkly posed – withdrawal or occupation?

The murder of Dato had seen the return to power, on 13 March, of Manuel Allendesalazar, at the head of a hard-line coalition determined to put an end to the anarchist threat. However, within three months the disaster of Annual, blamed on the incompetence of his cabinet, particularly of the Minister of War, the Vizconde de Eza, exacerbated the crisis of the Restoration system. While near civil war raged in the streets of Barcelona, a deeply damaging national controversy began over the issue of responsibility for Annual. The Africanistas blamed the government for failing to commit enough funds for an efficient war. The left blamed the King and the army high command for its incompetence.10 In desperation, Alfonso XIII turned again to Maura. Maura had long since abandoned his grand ambition of reforming the Restoration system and was deeply reluctant to return to active politics. He did so only because he felt that the monarchy was under threat and so reconciled himself to being the fireman of the system. He faced considerable difficulty in forming a government not least because of the mutual hostility of the followers of Dato and of La Cierva. Even greater was the mutual antipathy between the fiercely anti-Catalanist La Cierva and Cambó. In consequence, Maura’s oddly assorted cabinet, including La Cierva as Minister of War and Cambó as Minister of Finance, was not settled until 14 August.11

In fact, the defeat in an already deeply unpopular colonial war had unleashed a wave of public hostility against both the King and the dynastic parties. It was popularly believed that Alfonso XIII had specifically encouraged Silvestre in his disastrous advance. The Moroccan situation saw successive governments faced with considerable economic demands.12 In addition, the defeat intensified the divisions between the Junteros and the Africanistas. The consequent instability would conclude only with the establishment of a military dictatorship in September 1923.13

Maura was confronted by a daunting range of pre-existing problems: working-class discontent and subversion, particularly in Barcelona, the Catalan question and the profound economic difficulties following the end of the world war, all exacerbated by the Moroccan disaster. The cost of the military adventure had to be met and the responsibilities for it confronted. Maura wrote to his son on 26 August 1921: ‘We shall see how long the wedding cake lasts. It will last as long as we don’t squander with our mistakes the overwhelming weight of opinion currently running in our favour and divert it towards those who would be delighted to see the government have a spectacular failure.’ Until October 1921, he governed with the Cortes closed. Nevertheless, over the following months, he achieved considerable practical success. In military terms, the territory lost in July 1921 was soon reconquered. As Minister of Finance, Cambó had reformed the banking system.14 Moreover, the wave of left-wing opposition had been calmed by one of the Vizconde de Eza’s last and most efficacious acts. Eza’s principal concern had been to prove that he was not to be blamed for the debacle and, on 4 August 1921, he had appointed the sixty-four-year-old General Juan Picasso González to head an inquiry into the responsibilities for Annual. The much decorated General was uncle to the artist Pablo Picasso.15

There was generalized support for the massive revenge campaign that saw the recovery of the territory lost after Annual. The sight of masses of corpses of hideously tortured Spanish soldiers triggered vengeance of untrammelled savagery. The brutalization of the officer corps would be visited on the Spanish left during the civil war.16 There was disagreement over Cambó’s ambitious economic reform plans, although the central preoccupation was the reconquest of the Moroccan colony. Cambó clashed constantly with La Cierva who, with the encouragement of the King, pursued policies of ingratiation with the army as well as supporting the Unión Monárquica Nacional. Such was the tension between La Cierva and Cambó and indeed between La Cierva and other ministers that the government fell in the second week of March 1922.17 In the hope of preventing Maura from resigning, Alfonso XIII had proposed, via Cambó, that the two should form a new government and rule by decree. Maura refused on grounds of age, saying ‘It’s already too late for me.’18

Maura was replaced by José Sánchez Guerra. Sánchez Guerra’s government lived in dread of the impending Picasso report on the responsibility for the Moroccan disaster. The Socialist Indalecio Prieto had travelled to North Africa on 24 August 1921 and toured the area indefatigably for seven weeks interviewing survivors, accompanying the troops, witnessing the most gruesome sights. His series of twenty-eight vividly written articles about conditions after Annual, published in El Liberal between 30 August and 18 October, constituted the first reliable account of the magnitude of the disaster. Written with objectivity and some sympathy for the military on the ground, the articles were widely reproduced by other newspapers. Prieto also made resounding speeches in the Cortes that, together with the articles, had a massive impact.19

When the Cortes debate began as a result of the official inquiry led by General Picasso, there were broadly three approaches. The government of Sánchez Guerra wanted to limit responsibilities to the military high command in Morocco. The first casualty within the high command was General Berenguer, who resigned as High Commissioner on 10 July 1922 and was replaced by General Ricardo Burguete.20 The Liberals wanted to widen the issue to include the Allendesalazar government in power at the time of Annual. Prieto and the Socialists, however, wanted to go further and implicate the King.21 Prieto took the lead with several powerful speeches in the Cortes, the first of which was delivered eight days after his return from Morocco. The Picasso report exposed the incompetence and corruption within the high command in relation to the disappearance of funds and the sale of food supplies to hotels and restaurants and of weaponry to the enemy. The issue went further in that the financial interests of the Spanish oligarchy in terms of mining, electricity and railways as well as shipping were protected by the army without any particular benefit to the nation. The military high command were involved in corrupt relations with the economic interests that they protected.22 This was hardly new. For years, corruption had been denounced by the left-wing press, particularly in La Lucha, the newspaper of the Partit Republicà Català, which had been founded in 1917 by Marcelino Domingo, Lluís Companys and Francesc Layret.23 Nevertheless, for the Picasso report to bring the matter to national prominence and in a way that demanded action constituted a bombshell.

In Melilla, large-scale funding for roads, for barracks and for equipment disappeared into the pockets of the colonels and generals. There were cases where money requisitioned for the bribery of non-existent Berber chieftains had been pocketed. These devices, together with large-scale selling of weaponry by senior officers, saw the accumulation of considerable fortunes. In the same way as underpaid government officials depended on bribes, lower-rank officers traded in army supplies of soap, building materials, food and arms and ammunition. It was discovered that, in just one ordnance depot, 77 million pesetas had been spent without any plausible account appearing on the books. Officers and their wives bartered guns and ammunition for fresh vegetables in the market places of the protectorate. Rank-and-file soldiers were often the victims in terms of poor-quality food and equipment. Indeed, they were often forced to go barefoot. Even more scandalous was the appalling state of military hospitals where the lack of pharmaceuticals was notorious. The military monopoly on all aspects of the colonial administration meant that contracts for garrison construction were often given to relatives of officers. Private individuals who wished to build houses were obliged to employ military engineers, who charged exorbitant fees for their work. While the corruption of the politicians could occasionally be reported in the press, the Law of Jurisdictions made it dangerous to comment on military misdeeds.24

Prieto’s devastating oratory had a huge national impact. Speaking of the ‘putrefaction’ of Melilla, he highlighted government incompetence, military corruption and the atrocities committed against the Moroccan population by officers of the African Army, especially the frequency with which women were raped. He declared: ‘Melilla is a brothel and a den of thieves.’ He accused La Cierva – who had put obstacles in the way of Prieto’s tour of Morocco – of so favouring the Juntas as to undermine military efficiency. He condemned the government for not issuing figures for the number of dead, which he put at 8,000. When seeking to allocate responsibility, he blamed the King for encouraging Silvestre and denounced ‘this wretched reign’. He ended with the damning words: ‘Those fields of colonial dominion are now fields of death; eight thousand corpses are gathered on the steps of the throne to demand justice.’25 Eventually, Picasso’s report would put the casualties at more than 13,000.

An indication of the scale of the corruption can be seen in the considerable fortune that Santiago Alba made in 1921 while he was Foreign Minister, with the help of Juan March, from the sale of weaponry to the Moroccan rebels. The arms were transported from Dutch and Portuguese ports and from Gibraltar. At the time, the Compañía Transmediterránea, of which March was one of the major shareholders, had the monopoly of troop and materiel transport for the North African coast for the duration of the war.26 Military corruption was not confined to the Moroccan colony. Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, who was Liberal Minister of War in 1923, discovered that the quartermasters’ corps (Intendencia) was involved in a massive swindle involving invented purchases of flour.27

Despite being preoccupied with establishing responsibility for Annual, Sánchez Guerra had embarked on a conciliatory social policy. To the fury of the Catalan industrialists, and even more so of Martínez Anido, he restored constitutional guarantees and opened the way to the legalization of the CNT. In fact, this coincided with a move to greater moderation within the CNT. A delegation was sent to Martínez Anido to request the reopening of workers’ centres and the legalization of trade unions. He responded violently: ‘I shit on Sánchez Guerra’s order to restore constitutional guarantees. Here in Barcelona and its province, I’m in charge, not him. Get out of my sight immediately if you don’t want a hard time.’ With so many senior figures either dead or imprisoned, the leadership was in flux and Martínez Anido’s response strengthened the more radical elements. Among the new figures there was intense enthusiasm for the Russian revolution and consequently a bitter conflict over the relationship of the CNT to the Comintern.28

The Secretary General of the CNT Evelio Boal López had been arrested in March 1921 and subsequently murdered by the police in a demonstration of the ley de fugas. Boal had been replaced by a young journalist, Andreu Nin. His sympathy for the Comintern was matched by that of Joaquín Maurín, who become leader of the CRT Federation in Lleida in April 1921. Nin was born in 1892 in El Vendrell in the province of Tarragona where he had been a pupil of the cellist Pau Casals. Maurín was born in 1896 in the tiny village of Bonansa in the province of Huesca. It had been decided in April 1921 to send a small CNT delegation to the inaugural congress of the Red International of Labour Unions (Krasnyi Internatsional Profsoyuzov, or Profintern) that took place in Moscow in July 1921. The visit confirmed Nin and Maurín in their view that the CNT should join the Comintern. Nin remained in Russia and eventually became a close collaborator of Trotsky. Maurín returned to Catalonia and replaced Nin as Secretary General of the CRT but faced a wave of hostility to the idea of adherence to the Comintern. However, he was arrested in February 1922.29 The resurgence of the more moderate elements was confirmed at the Congress of Zaragoza on 11–12 June 1922. Ángel Pestaña had visited the Soviet Union in 1920 and returned deeply disillusioned. He had been arrested immediately on arrival in Spain and was therefore unable to put his views to the organization. Now, he and Seguí argued successfully against joining the Profintern. They both felt that it was important to reunite the anarchist movement and to seek legality. They were even ready to cooperate with liberal political groups. The moderate syndicalist Joan Peiró replaced Maurín.30

Both Martínez Anido and the employers’ organizations, ‘the Patronal’, were dismayed by the re-emergence of the CNT, which they blamed for the more liberal policies of Sánchez Guerra. However, the triumph of the trade union wing of the CNT was, thanks to the Civil Governor’s intransigence, paralleled by a resurgence of pistolerismo by the action groups. Needless to say, the Libres were not slow to retaliate. From March to October 1922, the Libres carried out eight assassinations and the anarchists five. Martínez Anido was engaging in a deliberate provocation to build up opposition to Sánchez Guerra. Criticism of the Libres in the Cortes by Indalecio Prieto saw the group’s deputy leader, Juan Laguía Lliteras, travel to Madrid and, on 16 May, physically attack the Socialist deputy. On 7 August, Martínez Anido made a token offer of resignation which, under threats from Primo de Rivera and demonstrations of support from industrialists’ organizations, Sánchez Guerra was obliged to refuse.31

Some weeks later, the Civil Governor was outraged to learn that Pestaña was going to make a speech in Manresa. On 25 August, Pestaña was waylaid by a gang of gunmen including Laguía Lliteras. The operation was ordered by Martínez Anido and financed by Muntadas. Pestaña was badly wounded, with one of the bullets puncturing a lung. He was laid up for two months during which time Arlegui had the Libres send another squad to surround the hospital with a view to finishing him off. In local brothels, they boasted about their intentions. The left and liberal press reported the case and Prieto delivered protests in the Cortes. Sánchez Guerra, more to prevent a scandal than to save Pestaña’s life, instructed the Minister of the Interior, Vicente Piniés, to send Civil Guards to guard the hospital. He also ordered Martínez Anido to report daily on Pestaña’s health. Nothing was done to arrest the Libre hit squad.32

There were several unsuccessful efforts by anarchist action groups to kill Martínez Anido. The most elaborate was actually a trap set up by the police. In the hope of justifying a massacre of anarchist militants, Arlegui commissioned the agent provocateur Inocencio Feced and Pere Mártir Homs, a labour lawyer on his payroll, to mount a fake assassination attempt on Martínez Anido. According to Ricardo Sanz, it was Homs who had organized the murder of Layret. In coordination with elements in police headquarters, including Captain Lasarte, Homs was the link to the paid assassins of the Libres. Now, Feced and a police agent called Florentino Pellejero infiltrated an anarchist group from Valencia led by José Claramonte and convinced them that it would be easy to kill Martínez Anido. Feced provided dummy bombs filled with sawdust which the others believed were to be thrown at the Civil Governor’s car as he returned from the theatre.

As the group lay in ambush, Pellejero opened fire on them and shot Claramonte, who managed to shoot him in return. Another of the anarchists, Amalio Cerdeño, was captured and shot by the police, using the ley de fugas. However, he did not die immediately. He and other anarchists detained earlier in the proceedings were interrogated by a judge who quickly saw what Arlegui had planned. He informed the senior prosecutor, Diego Medina. In the early hours of the morning, Medina telephoned Sánchez Guerra, gave him details of what had happened and revealed that Arlegui and Martínez Anido had already planned to kill around 200 anarchists as a reprisal for the ‘assassination attempt’. The Prime Minister seized on the excuse for getting rid of both. He telephoned Martínez Anido and informed him that, in view of these lamentable events, he was dismissing Arlegui. Justifying the attempt on the life of Pestaña, the Civil Governor commented: ‘As long as the putrefaction that for many years has been hanging over Barcelona is not cleared away, expelling the scum that comes from all over, nothing useful can be done.’ Unused to anyone challenging him and utterly furious, Martínez Anido had already declared that, if Arlegui were dismissed, he would resign. To his consternation, Sánchez Guerra replied that he reluctantly accepted his resignation.33

The Catalan financial and industrial elites were outraged and the conservative press in Barcelona declared that Sánchez Guerra’s action had left the city defenceless. One week later, on 31 October, the Barcelona haute bourgeoisie gathered at the Ritz to give Martínez Anido a spectacular send-off.34 However, the effect of his removal was somewhat diminished by Sánchez Guerra’s appointment of Miguel Primo de Rivera as Captain General on 14 March 1922. Fiercely hostile to the CNT, Primo was furious that his close friends Martínez Anido and Arlegui had been dismissed. A delegation of employers’ organizations had visited Primo on 27 October and had been reassured by his statement that he shared their distress at the loss of two ‘most worthy officers’. The tension was increased when the government recognized the workers’ right to free association. The new Civil Governor, General Julio Ardanaz, authorized the opening of workers’ centres and the activities of Catalan trade unions.35

Feeling vulnerable, industrialists were heartened by the triumph of fascism in Italy. El Eco Patronal, the journal of the leaders of the Madrid building industry, declared that fascism was an example to be followed in Spain. Mussolini was praised as ‘a modest man’ and proudly declared to be ‘one of our own’ because he had been a building labourer. He was praised for ‘restoring normality’ to Italian political life, a euphemism for the crushing of left. The Somatén was compared with the Fascist Party and the editorial asked if it was not possible to find a Spanish Mussolini. The Duce was enviously seen as the model for the iron surgeon that Spain needed. Such enthusiasm naturally provoked fears on the left. The Confederación Patronal Española even launched an unsuccessful newspaper called La Camisa Negra (The Black Shirt) with editorial support from the extreme right-wing Maurista Manuel Delgado Barreto. The hard-line President of the Catalan federation, Félix Graupera, called for businessmen across Spain to emulate their Italian equivalents. It was hardly surprising that the patronal press approved of the violence used by the Fascists to crush the working-class movement in Italy, an operation it referred to as a ‘necessary and inevitable evil’.36

Cambó, however, stressing its anti-democratic character, saw Italian fascism as merely chronologically parallel to events in Spain but not suitable for emulation.37 The Conde de Romanones was aware of efforts to create a fascist party out of the Sindicatos Libres. The commander of the Barcelona garrison, Bartolomé de Roselló, held a meeting of officers in the Casino Militar in the spring of 1923 ‘to discuss the creation of a fascist party whose basis would be the Sindicato Libre, to which end the secretary is already in Italy’. The Secretary of the Libres, the notorious Juan Laguía Lliteras, had indeed gone to Rome. He held talks with the Fascists which came to naught. Discussions with the Partito Popolare were more fruitful. Important right-wing civilians were present at the meeting in the Casino Militar. The pro-fascist officers from the Barcelona garrison formed a group known as La Traza (the Project) with links to other garrisons. Emulating Mussolini’s Black Shirts, they wore a blue shirt as their uniform. Their aim to become a nationwide organization failed totally. That there was never to be a full-scale Spanish equivalent of Italian fascism until the civil war was largely the consequence of Spanish neutrality in the Great War and the lack of thousands of post-war ex-combatants.38

The concerns of the Catalan elite about the departure of Martínez Anido were exacerbated by the continuing instability of the political system, over which hung the issue of responsibility for the disaster of Annual. The two principal parties were divided internally and the cabinet of Sánchez Guerra could not muster a parliamentary majority to get approval for the budget. Prieto had kept the issue at boiling point in the Cortes on 4 May 1922 with his stark analysis of the army’s failure.39 However, his most devastating intervention came after Sánchez Guerra, who had also assumed the portfolio of Minister of War, had responded to the widespread demand for action by agreeing, on 19 July, that General Picasso’s findings could be discussed in the Cortes after a special parliamentary commission had analysed it. Prieto thanked him for this act of respect for the Cortes. Romanones, in contrast, was appalled. He was planning his own comeback with a grand coalition of the four main Liberal factions – his own more conservative grouping, the moderate centrist ‘liberal-democrats’ under García Prieto, the followers of the progressive, albeit personally corrupt, Santiago Alba and the Reformists under Melquíades Álvarez. Accordingly, he was aghast that Sánchez Guerra should have made this concession and thereby exposed García Prieto and other ministers to accusations of complicity in the disaster.40

The final Picasso report was presented to the Cortes on 15 November but not fully discussed until one week later.41 Prieto, who was a member of the special commission, made a passionate speech to the Cortes over two days, on 21 and 22 November. He found reason to blame every government since 1909 but reserved his most pungent criticisms for that of Allendesalazar. He also criticized the three most senior generals at the time of Annual, Berenguer, Navarro, who was the captive of Abd el-Krim, and Fernández Silvestre, who was dead. The President of the Cortes was scandalized when Prieto quoted Silvestre as saying that he was going to Morocco to capture Alhucemas (the key to the Rif) ‘because the King had authorized it and urged him to do so’. He ended with a sarcastic reference to the King’s pleasure-seeking in Paris and on fashionable French beaches.42

Romanones was not alone in questioning the political wisdom of the Prime Minister. The King told Romanones that it was reckless folly to allow the Picasso report to be discussed by the Cortes.43 Desperate for more stable government, he revealed further doubts about Sánchez Guerra when he implicitly compared him to Maura. He remarked to Maura’s friend César Silio: ‘We used to be in the Ritz Hotel and now we’ve ended up in the Posada del Peine.’ (The Posada del Peine was a traditional and very modest inn in old Madrid.)44 The King’s solution was to turn to Cambó. Cambó was one of the few prominent politicians who seemed to be exempt from corruption, electoral or otherwise. On 30 November, Alfonso XIII offered him the post of Prime Minister, suggesting that he could rule with or without parliament. The King cited the exhaustion of Maura, the scale of government problems and Cambó’s brilliant performances in the Ministries of Public Works and Finance. However, his offer of total power was conditional on Cambó’s renunciation of Catalanism and taking up residence in Madrid. It was not much of an offer. Even if Cambó did give up his aspirations for Catalonia, the opposition of the dynastic parties was guaranteed and, if he renounced Catalanism, the Lliga would be finished.