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(#litres_trial_promo) At the beginning of 1924, he had been one of the founders, along with General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, of a journal called Revista de Tropas Coloniales which advocated that Spain maintain its colonial presence in Africa. At the start of 1925, he would become head of its editorial board. Franco was to write more than forty articles for the journal. In one published in April 1924, entitled ‘passivity and inaction’, he argued that the weakness of Spanish policy, ‘the parody of a protectorate’, was encouraging rebellion among the indigenous tribes.
(#litres_trial_promo) It made a considerable impact.
Shortly after visiting the King, the newly wed Franco and his bride took up residence in Ceuta. The situation in Morocco seemed ominously quiet. In fact, by the spring of 1924, Abd el Krim’s power had grown enormously and he no longer recognized the authority of the Sultan. He was presenting himself as the figurehead of a vaguely nationalistic Berber movement and talking in terms of establishing an independent socialist state. Numerous tribes accepted his leadership and, under his self-bestowed title of ‘Emir of the Rif’, in 1924, he formally requested membership of the League of Nations.
(#litres_trial_promo) After the defeat of Annual, the Spanish counter-offensive had recaptured an area around Melilla. Apart from that, the Spanish foothold consisted only of the towns of Ceuta, Tetuán, Larache and Xauen. The local garrisons were confident that they could hold the territory but were seriously disturbed by rumours that they were about to receive orders to withdraw. Anticipating difficulties, the military commander of Ceuta, General Montero, during the fesival of the Pascua Militar on 5 January called upon the officers under his command to give their word that they would obey orders no matter what they were. Franco took the lead in pointing out that they could not be asked to obey orders that were contrary to military regulations.
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Possibly alerted by these objections, Primo de Rivera finally decided to inspect the situation personally. In the meantime, Sanjurjo was sent to take over as commander of Melilla. Abd el Krim greeted him with an offensive on Sidi Mesaud only to be driven back by the Legion commanded by Franco. When the Dictator arrived in June 1924, he quickly grasped the essential absurdity of the Spanish military predicament. His inclination was to abandon the Protectorate on the grounds that to pacify it fully would be too expensive and to go on holding it on the basis of strings of waterless, indefensible blockhouses was ludicrous. For part of his tour, the Dictator insisted on being accompanied by Franco. At the time, the young Lieutenant-Colonel was deeply concerned about rumours that Primo had come to arrange a Spanish withdrawal. He had just tried to convince the High Commissioner, General Aizpuru, that the publication of orders to abandon the inland towns would provoke a major offensive by the forces of Abd el Krim. Franco had agreed with Lieutenant-Colonel Luis Pareja of the Regulares that, in the event of a withdrawal from Xauen, they would both apply for transfers to the mainland. In a letter to Pareja in July 1924, Franco declared that when the time came the bulk of his officers would do the same.
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At one notorious dinner, in Ben Tieb on 19 July 1924, there was an incident involving the Legion and the Dictator which has become the basis of subsequent myth. This was the dinner at which, legend in the Legion would have it, Franco had arranged for the Dictator to be served a menu consisting entirely of eggs.
(#litres_trial_promo)Huevos (eggs) being the Spanish slang for testicles, the machista symbolism was obvious: the visitor needed huevos and the Legion had plenty to spare. However, given Franco’s fanatical respect for discipline and his ambitious concern for his career, it is difficult to believe that he would so blatantly insult a senior officer and head of the government. In 1972, Franco denied that such a menu had been served.
At the dinner, Franco made a harsh but careful speech against abandonismo. What he said revealed his lifelong commitment to Spanish Morocco: ‘where we tread is Spanish soil, because it has been bought at the highest price and with the most precious coin: the Spanish blood shed here. We reject the idea of pulling back because we are convinced that Spain is in a position to dominate her zone.’ Primo responded with an equally strong speech explaining the logic behind plans for a withdrawal and a call for blind obedience. When a Colonel of Primo’s staff said ‘muy bien’ (hear, hear), the irascible and diminutive Major José Enrique Varela, unable to contain himself, shouted ‘muy mal’. Primo’s speech was interrupted by hissing and hostile remarks. Sanjurjo, who accompanied him, later told José Calvo Sotelo, the Dictator’s Minister of Finance, that he had kept his hand on the butt of his pistol throughout the speeches, fearing a tragic incident. When the Dictator finished he was greeted with total silence. Franco, ever careful, hastened to visit Primo immediately after the dinner to clarify his position. He said that if what had happened required punishment, he was prepared to resign. Primo made light of Franco’s part in the affair and permitted him to return later and again put his point of view about a landing in Alhucemas.
(#litres_trial_promo) In his own 1972 version, he claimed, implausibly, to have given Primo de Rivera a dressing down. As a consequence, he said, Primo de Rivera promised to do nothing without consulting the ‘key officers’.
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Shortly after the Ben Tieb dinner, the Dictator prepared an operation to fold up 400 positions and block-houses. As Franco and others had warned, the talk of withdrawal encouraged Abd el Krim and stimulated the desertion of large numbers of Moroccan troops from the Spanish ranks. Lieutenant-Colonel Pareja understood that this meant that the conditions agreed with Franco for their joint resignations had arrived. He presented his transfer request and was disgusted to discover that Franco had not kept his word. Franco, always cautious, particularly after his confrontation with Primo de Rivera, remained in his post.
(#litres_trial_promo) Shortly after the return of Primo to Madrid, Abd el Krim attacked in force, cutting the Tangier-Tetuan road and threatening Tetuan. A communiqué was issued on 10 September 1924 announcing the evacuation of the zone. Anxiety about the consequences of the proposed withdrawal led a number of officers in Africa to toy with the idea of a coup against Primo. The ring-leader was Queipo de Llano, who claimed in 1930 that Franco had visited him on 21 September 1924 to ask him to lead a coup against the Dictator. In 1972, Franco did not deny that the conversation had taken place. However, as had happened in the case of his pact with Lieutenant-Colonel Pareja, nothing came of an uncharacteristically frank expression of discontent. Where military discipline was concerned, habitual caution always prevailed.
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Franco and the Legion were thrown into service at the head of a column led by General Castro Girona which set off from Tetuan on 23 September in order to relieve the besieged garrison at Xauen, ‘the sacred city’, in the mountains. It took them until 2 October to fight the forty miles there. Over the next month, units from isolated positions drifted in until at the beginning of November there were ten thousand men in Xauen, many of them wounded, most of them exhausted. An evacuation was then undertaken. Primo won over much of the Army of Africa by assuming complete responsibility for whatever might happen, naming himself High Commissioner on 16 October. He returned to Morocco and set up his general staff in Tetuán. The evacuation of the Spanish, Jewish and friendly Arab inhabitants of Xauen was an awesome task. Children, women, and other civilians, the old and the sick, were packed into trucks. The immensely long and vulnerable column set off on 15 November. Moving slowly at night, their rear was covered by the Legion under Franco. Constantly harrassed by raiding tribesmen, and severely slowed down by rain storms which turned the tracks into impassable mud, it took four weeks to return to Tetuan where the survivors arrived on 13 December. It was a remarkable feat of dogged determination though nothing approaching the ‘magisterial military lesson’ perceived by Franco’s hagiographers.
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Franco was deeply disappointed to be a party to the abandonment of any fragment of the territory in defence of which much of his life had been spent. He published an article on the tragedy of the withdrawal, based on his diary. Vividly and passionately written, it reflects the resignation and sadness of the day before the retreat.
(#litres_trial_promo) However, he was consoled by being awarded another Military Medal and by being promoted to full colonel on 7 February 1925 with effect from twelve months earlier, 31 January 1924. He was also allowed to keep the command of the Legion, although that post should have been held by a Lieutenant-Colonel. He was further consoled when Primo de Rivera in late 1924 changed his mind about abandoning Morocco. The Dictator decided sometime in late November or early December to pursue the Alhucemas landing and ordered that detailed plans be drawn up. In early 1925, Franco experimented with amphibious landing craft. It was during one of these exercises, on 30 March 1925, on board the Spanish coastal patrol vessel Arcila, that he was offered a plate of breakfast by a young naval lieutenant called Luis Carrero Blanco who would, from 1942 to 1973, be his closest collaborator. Franco refused the offer on the grounds that, since being wounded in El Biutz, he always went into action on an empty stomach.
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In March 1925, on a visit to Morocco, General Primo de Rivera presented Franco with a letter from the King and a gold religious medal. The letter was fulsome: ‘Dear Franco, On visiting the [Virgin of the] Pilar in Zaragoza and hearing a prayer for the dead before the tomb of the leader of the Tercio, Rafael Valenzuela, gloriously killed at the head of his banderas, my prayers and my thoughts were for you all. The beautiful history that you are writing with your lives and your blood is a constant example of what can be done by men who reckon everything in terms of the fulfilment of their duty … you know how much you are loved and appreciated by your most affectionate friend who embraces you – Alfonso XIII.’
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After entering Xauen, the triumphant Abd el Krim had celebrated his hegemony by capturing El Raisuni. He then made a colossal mistake. At precisely the moment that the French were moving into the noman’s-land between the two protectorates, his long-term ambition of creating a more or less socialist republic led him to try to overthrow the Sultan, who was the instrument of French colonial rule. Taking on the French, initially he defeated them. His advance skirmishers came within twenty miles of Fez. This led to an agreement in June 1925 between Primo de Rivera and the French commander in Africa, Philippe Pétain, for a combined operation. The plan was for a substantial French force of one hundred and sixty thousand colonial troops to attack from the south while seventy-five thousand Spanish soldiers moved down from the north. The Spanish contingent was to land at Alhucemas under the overall command of General Sanjurjo. Franco was in command of the first party of troops to go ashore and had responsibility for establishing a bridgehead.
There was no effort at secrecy either in the planning or on the night of 7 September, when Spanish ships arrived in the bay with lights ablaze and the troops singing. As a result of poor reconnaissance, the landing took place on a beach where the landing craft hit shoals and sand-banks too far out for tanks to be disembarked. Moreover, the water was at a depth of over one and a half metres and many of the Legionaires could not swim. Their attack was awaited by rows of entrenched Moors who immediately began to fire. The naval officer in charge of the landing craft radioed the fleet where the High Command awaited news. In view of his signal, the vessels were ordered to withdraw. Franco decided that a retreat at that point would shatter the morale of his men and boost that of the Moorish defenders. Accordingly, he countermanded the order and told his bugler to sound the attack. His Legionaires jumped overboard, waded to the shore and succeeded in establishing the bridgehead. Franco was later called before his superiors to explain himself which he did by reference to military regulations which granted officers a degree of initiative under fire.
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The entire operation was a condemnation of the appalling organization of the Spanish Army and poor planning by Sanjurjo. After the bridgehead was established there was insufficient food and ammunition to permit an advance. There was extremely poor ship-to-shore communication and very limited artillery support. Two weeks passed before the order was given to move beyond the bridgehead. Then the advance was subject to the mortar batteries placed by Abd el Krim. In part because of the tenacity of Franco himself, the Spanish attack continued. However, with the French moving up from the south, it was only a matter of time before Abd el Krim surrendered. On 26 May 1926, he gave himself up to the French authorities.
(#litres_trial_promo) The resistance of the Rif and Jibala tribes collapsed.
Franco produced a vividly, if somewhat romantically, written diary of his participation in the landing, entitled Diario de Albucemas. It was published over four months from September to December 1925 in the Revista de Tropas Coloniales and again in 1970 in a version which he himself censored.
(#litres_trial_promo) Referring to an attack on a hill which took place in the first hours after the landing, he wrote in 1925 ‘those defenders who are too tenacious are put to the knife’ changing it in 1970 to ‘those defenders who are too tenacious fell beneath our fire’. Even after editing the text in 1970, Franco left in phrases reminiscent of the adventure stories of his youth. Men were not shot but ‘scythed down by enemy lead’. ‘Fate has snatched away from us the flower of our officers. Our time has come. Tomorrow we will avenge them!’
(#litres_trial_promo) Years later, he told his doctor that, during the Alhucemas campaign, a deserter from the Legion was brought in and, with no hesitation other than the time taken to confirm his identity, he ordered a firing squad to be formed and the man shot.
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On 3 February 1926, Franco was promoted to Brigadier General, which made the front page of the newspapers in Galicia.
(#litres_trial_promo) At the age of 33, he was the youngest general in Europe, and was finally obliged by his seniority to leave the Legion. On being promoted, Franco’s service record had the following added: ‘He is a positive national asset and surely the country and the Army will derive great benefit from making use of his remarkable aptitudes in higher positions’.
(#litres_trial_promo) He was given command of the most important brigade in the Army, the First Brigade of the First Division in Madrid, composed of two aristocratic regiments, the Regimiento del Rey and the Regimiento de León
(#ulink_d47827d4-97e1-51b1-92f8-f770655e3206).
On returning to Spain, Franco brought with him a political baggage acquired in Africa which he would carry through the rest of his life. In Morocco, Franco had come to associate government and administration with the endless intimidation of the ruled. There was an element too of the patronizing superiority which underlay much colonial government, the idea that the colonised were like children who needed a firm paternal hand. He would effortlessly transfer his colonial attitudes to domestic politics. Since the Spanish Left was pacifist and hostile to the great adventure in Morocco, associated in his mind with social disorder and regional separatism, he considered leftists to be as dire an enemy as rebellious tribesmen.
(#litres_trial_promo) He regarded the poisonous ideas of the Left as acts of mutiny to be eradicated by iron discipline which, when it came to governing an entire population, meant repression and terror. The paternal element would later be central to his own perception of his rule over Spain as a strong and benevolent father figure.
In Africa, Franco had also learned many of the strategems and devices which were to be his political hallmark after 1936. He had observed that political success came from a cunning game of divide and rule among the tribal chiefs. That is what the Sultan did; it was what the better Spanish High Commissioners aspired to do. At a lower level, local garrison commanders had to do something similar. Astute, greedy, envious and resentful chieftains were played off against one another in a shifting game of alliances, betrayals and lightning strikes. His assimilation of such skills would permit him to run rings around his political enemies, rivals and collaborators inside Spain from 1936 until well into the 1960s. Although he acquired such skills, he had never developed any serious interest in the Moroccans. Like most colonial officers, Franco did not learn more than a smattering of the language of those he fought and ruled. Later in life, he would also fail in his attempts to learn English. Absorbed in military matters, he could never muster much interest in other cultures and languages.
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On the day on which his promotion to general was announced, Franco’s success had been somewhat overshadowed by the spectacular national newspaper coverage given to his brother Ramón. Major Ramón Franco was crossing the South Atlantic with Captain Julio Ruiz de Alda, one of the future founders of the Falange, in the Plus Ultra, a Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat.
(#litres_trial_promo) The regime and the press was treating Ramón as a modern Christopher Columbus. A committee was set up in El Ferrol to organize various tributes to the two brothers, including the unveiling of a plaque on the wall of the house in which they had been born. It read ‘In this house were born the brothers Francisco and Ramón Franco Baamonde, valiant soldiers who, at the head of the Tercio of Africa and crossing the Atlantic in the seaplane ‘Plus Ultra’, carried out heroic deeds which constitute glorious pages of the nation’s history. The town of El Ferrol is honoured by such brilliant sons to whom it dedicates this tribute of admiration and affection.’
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Franco took up his important post in Madrid in time to admire the achievements of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. What the officer corps perceived as regional separatism had been suppressed and labour unrest dramatically diminished. Anarchist and Communist unions had been suppressed while the Socialist union, the Unión General de Trabajadores, was given control of a newly created state arbitration machinery. The UGT became the semi-official trade union organization of the regime. A massive programme of infrastructural investment in roads and railways created a high degree of prosperity and near full employment. For an Army officer, particularly after the disorders of the period 1917 to 1923, it was a good time to be on active service. The constant criticism of the Army which officers associated with the parliamentary monarchy had been silenced. The triumph of Alhucemas had revived military popularity. It is little wonder that, like many Army officers and civilian rightists, Franco would come to look back on the six years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a golden age. He often commented during the 1930s that they were the only period of good government that Spain had enjoyed in modern times. In his view, Primo’s error was to have announced that he would hold power only for a short time until he had solved Spain’s problems. Franco said reprovingly to his Oviedo acquaintance, the monarchist, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez ‘that was a mistake; if you accept a command you have to take it as if it was going to be for the rest of your life’.
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The Dictatorship was also a period in which Franco experienced further inflation of his ego. On the evening of 3 February 1926, his fellow cadets of the fourteenth intake (promoción no. 14) at the Academia de Infantería de Toledo met to pay homage to the first of their number to become a general. They presented him with a dress sword and a parchment with the following inscription: ‘When the passage through the world of the present generation is no more than a brief comment in the book of History, there will endure the memory of the sublime epic written by the Spanish Army in the development of the nation. And the glorious names of the most important caudillos will be raised on high, and above them all will be lifted triumphantly that of General Francisco Franco Bahamonde to reach the sublime heights achieved by other illustrious men of war, Leiva, Mondragón, Valdivia and Hernán Cortés. His comrades pay this tribute of admiration and affection to him in recognition of his patriotism, his intelligence and his bravery’.
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In the course of the next few days, Franco would receive many telegrams from the local authorities of El Ferrol recounting the acts of homage mounted for his mother. On Sunday 7 February, bands played, firework displays were organized and ships in the bay sounded their horns. The town turned out to acclaim the historic flight by Ramón, who was still in Argentina, although Franco was not forgotten in the endless tributes made to Doña Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade. 12 February was declared a holiday in El Ferrol in honour of both brothers. The streets of the town were illuminated and a Te Deum was sung in the Church of San Julián to celebrate their achievements. The plaque was unveiled in the calle María. Messages of congratulation to Doña Pilar for both her sons arrived from the Alcaldes (mayors) of El Ferrol, the four provincial capitals of Galicia and from many towns across Spain.
(#litres_trial_promo) On 10 February, a massive crowd turned out in the Plaza de Colón (Columbus) in Madrid to acclaim Ramón’s achievement. In part, the media coverage and public enthusiasm were orchestrated by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in order to profit in propaganda terms from the flight of the Plus Ultra.
The adulation was largely directed at Ramón, but there is no reason to believe that Franco was resentful at seeing the black sheep of the family suddenly converted into a national hero. The adulation of his brother as a twentieth century Christopher Columbus may, however, have inspired Franco’s later efforts to present himself as a modern-day El Cid. Franco always had an intense loyalty to his family and, over the years, was to use his own position to help and protect Ramón from the consequences of his wilder actions. In any case, his own triumphs and popularity were sufficient in frequency and intensity for him not to need to feel envy. At Easter 1926, during the Corpus Christi procession at Madrid’s San Jerónimo Church, he commanded the troops which lined the streets and escorted the host. As the legendary hero of Africa, he was the object of the admiring attention of the upper class Madrileños who made up the congregation.
(#litres_trial_promo) In the late summer of 1927, Franco accompanied the King and Queen on an official visit to Africa during which new colours were given to the Legion at their headquarters in Dar Riffien.
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On 14 September 1926, Franco’s first and only child María del Carmen was born in Oviedo where Carmen had gone to be with her dying father.
(#litres_trial_promo) The new arrival was to become the focus of his emotional life. Years later, he was to say ‘when Carmen was born, I thought that I would go mad with joy. I would have liked to have had more children but it was not to be’.
(#litres_trial_promo) There have been insistent rumours that Carmen was not really Francisco’s daughter but was adopted, and that the father may have been his promiscuous brother Ramón. There is no evidence to support this theory, which seems to have arisen entirely from the fact that there are no known photographs of Carmen Polo noticeably pregnant and from Ramón’s notorious sexual adventurism.
(#litres_trial_promo) Franco’s sister, Pilar, went out of her way in her memoirs to make a point of saying that she saw Carmen Polo pregnant although her dates are wrong by two years.
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The posting to Madrid began a period in which Franco had plenty of spare time. Rather than make the lives of his colonels a misery by frequent surprise inspections, he left them to get on with running their own barracks, a pattern that he would later follow with his ministers. He rented an apartment on the elegant Castellana avenue and enjoyed a busy social life. He regularly met military friends from Africa and the Toledo Academy at the regular social gatherings or tertulias of the upper-class club, La Gran Peña, and in the cafés of Alcalá and the Gran Via. He was relatively close to Millán Astray, Emilio Mola, Luis Orgaz, José Enrique Varela and Juan Yagüe.
(#litres_trial_promo) While living in Madrid, he acquired a passion for cinema and became a member of the tertulia of the politician and writer Natalio Rivas, a member of the Liberal Party.
(#litres_trial_promo) At Rivas’s invitation, he appeared along with Millán Astray in a film entitled La Malcasada made by the director Gómez Hidalgo in Rivas’s house. Franco’s small part was as an Army officer recently returned from the African wars.
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At this stage of his life, as later, Franco had little interest in day-to-day politics. None the less, he began to think that ultimately he might play a political role of some kind. The popular acclaim which he had received after Alhucemas, the rapidity of his promotions, and the company which he now kept in Madrid, all pushed him to take for granted his own importance as a national figure. As he put it in retrospect ‘I was, as a result of my age and my prestige, called to render the highest services to the nation’. The Army’s apparent political success under Primo de Rivera may also have increased his tendency to dream of higher things for himself. He claimed later that, in preparation for his transcendental tasks, and taking advantage of the fact that his command in Madrid left him with very little to do, he began to read books on contemporary Spanish history and political economy.
(#litres_trial_promo) How much reading he did is impossible to say; his books were lost in Madrid in 1936 when his flat was ransacked by anarchists. Certainly, neither his speeches nor his own writings indicate any significant insight into history or economics.
Given his propensity to chat, he probably talked rather than read about economics. As he claimed later, he started at this time ‘with some frequency to visit the manager of the Banco de Bilbao, where Carmen had a few savings (unos ahorrillos)’. The banker in question was affable and intelligent and stimulated in Franco an interest in economics. Franco also discussed contemporary political issues with his immediate circle of friends and acquaintances. It is likely that such café conversations with friends, the bulk of whom were Africanistas like himself, can only have cemented his prejudices. Nevertheless, in later life he was to place enormous value on these conversations.
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His reading and his tertulias boosted Franco’s confidence in his own opinions to an inordinate degree. While on holiday in Gijón in 1929, he bumped into General Primo de Rivera on the beach. The ministers of Primo’s government were spending a few days together away from Madrid and the Dictator invited Franco to lunch with them – a mark of considerable favour by Primo towards the young general. His self-esteem duly inflated, Franco found himself seated next to José Calvo Sotelo, the brilliant Finance Minister, who was in the midst of trying to defend the value of the peseta against the consequences of a massive balance of payments deficit, a bad harvest and the first signs of the great Depression. Franco assured an intensely irritated Calvo Sotelo that there was no point in using Spain’s gold and foreign currency reserves to support the value of the peseta and that the money so used would be better spent on industrial investment. The reasoning by which Franco reached the interpretation he put before the Minister revealed a simple cunning: he based his argument on the belief that there need be no link between the exchange rate of a currency and the nation’s gold and foreign reserves provided their value were kept secret.
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The economic difficulties discussed at this lunch were not the only problems besetting the Dictatorship. The military was deeply divided and some sections of the Army were turning against the regime. Franco was paradoxically to be the beneficiary of one of the most serious errors made by the Dictator in this regard. Primo de Rivera was anxious to reform the antiquated structures of the Spanish Army and in particular to slim down the inflated officer corps. His ideal was a small professional Army but, as a result of the reversal of his original policy of abandonismo in Morocco, it had grown significantly in size and cost in the mid-1920s. By 1930, the officer corps would be reduced in size by only about 10 per cent and the Army as a whole by more than 25 per cent, at an inordinately high price in terms of internal military discontent. Large sums were spent on efforts at modernization although the final increase in the number of mechanized units was immensely disappointing.
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The relative failure of Primo’s technical reforms was overshadowed by the legacy of one bitterly divisive issue. Most publicity was generated, and most damage caused in terms of morale, by the Dictator’s efforts to eradicate the divisions between the artillery and the infantry over promotions. To a large extent, this was the question which had given birth to the Juntas de Defensa in 1917. Divisions between the infantry, and particularly the Africanistas, on the one hand, and the artillery and the engineers on the other arose from the fact that it was much more difficult for an engineer or the commander of an artillery battery to gain promotion by merit than for an infantry officer leading charges against the Moors. To underline their discontent with a promotion system which favoured the colonial infantry, the Artillery corps had sworn in 1901 to accept no promotions which were not granted on grounds of strict seniority and to seek instead other rewards or decorations.
Although on coming to power Primo de Rivera had been thought within the Army to be more sympathetic to the artillery position, he seems to have changed his mind as a result of his contacts with the infantry officer corps in Morocco before and during the Alhucemas operation.
(#litres_trial_promo) By decrees of 21 October 1925 and 30 January 1926, he introduced greater flexibility into the promotion system. This gave him the freedom to promote brave or capable officers but it was also perceived as opening a Pandora’s box of favouritism. There was already tension when, in a typically precipitate manner, on 9 June 1926, the Dictator issued a decree specifically obliging the artillery to accept the principle of promotions by merit. Those who had accepted medals instead of promotions were now deemed retrospectively to have been promoted. Hostility within the mainland officer corps to a whole range of tactless encroachments on military sensibilities by the Dictator was already leading to contacts between some officers and the liberal opposition to the regime. It came to a head in a feeble attempt at a coup known as the Sanjuanada on 24 June 1926.
(#litres_trial_promo) In August, the imposition of promotions upon the artillery provoked a near mutiny by artillery officers who confined themselves to their barracks. In Pamplona, shots were fired by infantrymen sent to put an end to one such ‘strike’ of artillerymen. The Director of the Artillery Academy of Segovia was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment, for refusing to hand over the Academy.
(#litres_trial_promo) Throughout the issue, Franco was careful not to get involved. He, more than anyone in the entire armed forces, had reason to be grateful to the system of promotions by merit.
Primo de Rivera won, but at the cost of dividing the Army and of undermining its loyalty to the King. His policy on promotions was to provide much of the cause for the grievances which lay behind some officers moving in the direction of the Republican movement. Thus, when the time came, some sectors of the Army would be ready to stand aside and permit first Primo’s own demise and then the coming of the Second Republic in April 1931.
(#litres_trial_promo) Broadly speaking, the Africanistas remained committed to the Dictatorship and thereafter were to be bitterly hostile to the democratic Republic which followed it in 1931.
(#litres_trial_promo) Indeed, the fault lines of the divisions created in the 1920s would run right through to the Civil War in 1936. Many of those who moved into opposition against Primo would be favoured by the subsequent Republican regime. In contrast, the Africanistas, including Franco, would see their previously privileged position dismantled.
The artillery/infantry, juntero/Africanista, issue had an immediate and direct impact on Franco’s life. In 1926, the Dictator was convinced that part of the promotions problem derived from the fact that there were separate academies for the officers of the four major corps, the infantry in Toledo, the artillery in Segovia, the cavalry in Valladolid and the engineers in Guadalajara. He concluded that Spain needed a single General Military Academy and decided to revive the Academia General Militar which had existed briefly during its so-called ‘first epoch’ between 1882 and 1893.
(#litres_trial_promo) By this time, and particularly after Alhucemas, Primo had developed a great liking for Franco. He told Calvo Sotelo that Franco was ‘a formidable chap, and he has an enormous future not only because of his purely military abilities but also because of his intellectual ones’.
(#litres_trial_promo) The Dictator was clearly grooming Franco for an important post. He sent him to the École Militaire de St Cyr, then directed by Philippe Pétain, in order to examine its structure. On 20 February 1927, Alfonso XIII approved a plan for a similar Spanish academy, and on 14 March 1927 Franco was made a member of a commission to prepare the way for it. By Royal Decree of 4 January 1928, he was appointed its first director. He expressed a preference for it to be sited at El Escorial but the Dictator insisted that it be in Zaragoza. Years later, Franco was alleged to have said that, if the Academy had been located at El Escorial instead of 350 kilometres from the capital, the fall of the monarchy in 1931 could have been avoided.
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In moving to the Academia General Militar, Franco was leaving behind him the kind of soldiering in which he made his reputation. Never again would he lead units of assault troops in the field. It was a major change, which taken with his marriage in 1923 and the birth of his daughter in 1926, would affect him profoundly. Until 1926, Franco was an heroic field soldier, an outstanding column commander, fearless if not reckless. Henceforth, as befitted his changing sense of his public persona, he would take ever fewer risks. In Morocco, he had been a ruthless disciplinarian, an abstemious and isolated individual with few friends.
(#litres_trial_promo) After his return to the Peninsula, he seems to have relaxed slightly, although he was always to remain obsessed with the primacy of unquestioning obedience and discipline. He became readier to turn a blind eye to laziness or incompetence in his subordinates, getting the best out of willing collaborators by manipulation and rewards. He became a relatively convivial frequenter of clubs and cafés where he would take an aperitif and give rein to his inclination to chat, recounting anecdotes and reminiscences among a group of military friends.
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Until the late 1920s, he showed few signs of being the archetypal gallego, slow, cunning and opaque, of his later years. He was a man of action, obsessed with his military career and little else. His early military writings are relatively straightforward and decently written, with some sensitivity to people and places. He was, of course, reserved, and predisposed by his military experience, and particularly by Africa, to certain political ideas, hostile to the Left and to regional autonomy movements. If he did read about politics, economics and recent history, it was probably more to confirm his prejudices than in search of enlightenment. From this time, a convoluted style and a pomposity of tone begins to be discernible in his speeches. In part, family responsibilities account for a greater caution but the more potent motive for his self-regard was a perception of his potential political importance. He was the object of public adulation in certain circles and had had plenty of indications that he was the general with the most brilliant prospects.
(#litres_trial_promo) He was showered with promotions, honours and plum postings. The talk of his being the youngest general in Europe cannot have failed to have affected him, as must the idea of providence watching over him, an idea particularly dear to his wife. To her influence in this respect must be added that of his near inseparable cousin, Pacón, now a major, who had become his ADC in the late summer of 1926.
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At the end of May 1929 there appeared in the magazine Estampa, in the section called ‘The woman in the home of famous men’, a rare interview with Carmen Polo and her husband. Conducted by Luis Franco de Espés, the Barón de Mora, a fervent admirer of Franco, the interview was as much concerned with ‘the famous man’ as with ‘the woman in the home’. Asked if he was satisfied to be what he was, Franco replied sententiously ‘I am satisfied to have served my fatherland to the full’. The Barón asked him what he would have liked to be if not a soldier to which he replied ‘architect or naval officer. However, aged fourteen I entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo against the will of my father.’ This was the first time that Franco had indicated any paternal opposition to his joining the military academy. There is no reason why his father should have opposed the move and, if he had done, there can be little doubt that he would have imposed his will. Apparently, Franco was trying to put distance between his beloved military career and his hated father.
‘All this’, he said, ‘is only with regard to my profession because my real inclination has always been towards painting’. On lamenting that he had no time to practice any particular genre, Carmen interrupted to point out that he painted rag dolls for their daughter, ‘Nenuca’. Then, the interview turned to the ‘the beautiful companion of the general, hiding the supreme delicacy of her figure behind a subtle dress of black crêpe’. Blushing, she recounted how she and her husband had fallen in love at a romería (country fair) and how he had pursued her doggedly thereafter. Playing the role of the faithful hand-maiden to the great man, she revealed her husband’s major defects to be that ‘he likes Africa too much and he studies books which I don’t understand’. Turning back to Franco, the Barón de Mora asked him about the three greatest moments of his life to which he responded with ‘the day that the Spanish Army landed at Alhucemas, the moment of reading that Ramón had reached Pernambuco and the day we got married’. The fact that the birth of his daughter Carmen did not figure in the list suggests that he was more anxious to project an image of patriotism untrammelled by ‘unmanly’ emotions. He was then asked about his greatest ambition which he revealed as being ‘that Spain should become as great again as she was once before.’ Asked if he was political, Franco replied firmly ‘I am a soldier’ and declared that his most fervent desire was ‘to pass unnoticed. I am very grateful for certain demonstrations of popularity but you can imagine how annoying it is to feel that you’re often being looked at and talked about’. Carmen listed her greatest love as music and her greatest dislike as ‘the Moors’. She had few happy memories of her time as an Army wife in Morocco spent consoling widows.
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Franco had arrived in Zaragoza on 1 December 1927 to supervise the building and installation of the new institution. The first entrance examinations were held in June 1928. On 5 October of that year, with the new buildings still unfinished, the Academy opened for its first intake in a nearby barracks. The new Director’s speech on opening the Academy reflected the philosophy that he had learned from his mother. Its theme was ‘he who suffers overcomes’.
(#litres_trial_promo) He also instructed the cadets to follow the ‘ten commandments’ or ‘decálogo’ which he had compiled on the basis of a similar ‘decálogo’ elaborated for the Legion by Millán Astray. Expressed in the most sententious terms, the commandments were: 1) Make great love for the Fatherland and fidelity to the King manifest in every act of your life; 2) Let a great military spirit be reflected in your vocation and your discipline; 3) Link to your pure chivalry a constant jealous concern for your reputation; 4) Be faithful in the fulfilment of your duties, being scrupulous in everything that you do; 5) Never grumble, nor tolerate others doing so; 6) Make yourself loved by those of lower rank and highly regarded by your superiors; 7) Volunteer for every sacrifice at times of greatest risk and difficulty; 8) Feel a noble comradeship, sacrificing yourself for your comrades and taking delight in their successes, prizes and progress; 9) Love responsibility and be decisive; 10) Be brave and self-denying.
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The generation educated under Franco’s close supervision at the Academia General Militar de Zaragoza, in its so-called second epoch between 1928 and 1931, was to receive significantly more practical training than had hitherto been the practice in the Toledo infantry academy. Franco insisted that no textbooks be used and that all classes be based on the practical experiences of the instructors.
(#litres_trial_promo) Skill in the use and care of weapons was insisted upon. The horsemanship of the graduates was of a high standard. Franco himself would direct from horseback the toughest manoeuvres. However, the central stress, derived from the decálogo, was on ‘moral’ values: patriotism, loyalty to the King, military discipline, sacrifice, bravery.
(#litres_trial_promo) The idea that ‘moral’ values could triumph over superior numbers or technology was one of the constant refrains of Franco’s military thought. Reflecting the Director’s own experiences in the primitive Moroccan war, the level of tactical and technological education at Zaragoza was not highly advanced and considerable effort went into denouncing democratic politics.
During the Civil War, officers who had trained at the Academy under Franco remembered him as a martinet who had laid traps for unwary cadets. In the streets of Zaragoza, he would pretend to be looking in shop windows to catch those who tried to get past without saluting their Director. As they went on, they would be called back by Franco’s soft, high, feared, voice. Remembering the nightly activities of his own contemporaries at Toledo, he insisted that all cadets carry at least one condom while walking in the city. Occasionally, he would stop them in the street and demand to see their protective equipment. There were strict penalties for those unable to produce it.
(#litres_trial_promo) In his farewell speech to the Academy in 1931, he listed among the great patriotic achievements of his time in the post the elimination of venereal disease among the cadets through ‘vigilance and prophylaxis’.
(#litres_trial_promo) His pride in that achievement was reflected when, in 1936, he boasted to his English teacher that he had ‘put down vice ruthlessly’ among the cadets at Zaragoza.
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