SPAIN: Two Plans

A year after the opening of Spam’s bloody, but undermanned civil war, neither Leftists nor Rightists lack able staff officers. What both sides do need is enough troops for effective action on five separate fronts that snake for nearly 1,200 miles down the midriff of Spain. For some months military observers on both sides have cynically propounded a convenient rule: they will concede definite military superiority to whichever side is able to maintain an offensive for three successive days.

By last week’s end that rule was still unbroken, but plenty was happening on both sides to keep correspondents busy. Madrid observers reported that masses of troops and a dusty serpent of nearly 1,000 motor trucks were climbing the ridges, moving north for a final assault on Santander, last important stronghold of the starving Basque defenders of Bilbao.

Quickly correspondents in Loyalist Spain translated this as an admission that the potent Rightist assault against Madrid of fortnight ago had broken down. For many weeks they have been aware that the Italian and German advisers of Generalissimo Franco, gathering daily in the heavily guarded headquarters directly opposite the west door of Salamanca Cathedral, have advocated two different plans of campaign for the remainder of the summer. Basically the German scheme was to immunize every front but Madrid, try to lure the Leftists into one more half baked offensive, always fruitful of casualties, and then mass every available man from Malaga and the South, the Basque front, Toledo, Teruel to make one great conclusive drive against Madrid.

Basis of the Italian plan was to do something quickly to restore Italy’s battered military prestige. Santander, once the favorite yachting centre of the Basque Riviera, is less protected by mountains than is Bilbao. There are not more than 5,000 exhausted Basque militiamen to guard it, and though Valencia has been able to sneak a few planes through to Santander in recent weeks, a service it could not perform for Bilbao, the overwhelmingly superior Rightist forces on the Basque front ought to be able to capture Santander in less than a week, any time the order is issued. Thousands of Italians are on that front, and Italy would dearly love to make a grandiloquent state entry into Santander and then, if possible, in the opposite corner of Spain, where other Italian thousands are quartered, extend that stalemated front from Malaga to Almeria for another publicized victory. It would then be time enough for a final decisive attack on Madrid.

The half-successful Leftist offensive of last month (TIME, July 19, et seq.) shelved the Italian scheme for weeks. By any scheme of tactics a counteroffensive was immediately necessary and it was undertaken with continuing but vague reports of Rightist successes. Then last week came that serpent of troops and trucks from Burgos and Vitoria. It meant that the Rightist offensive at Madrid had been checked too, and the Italian plan was getting another inning.

Meanwhile, northeast of Madrid, Rightist forces have pushed a long finger down from Zaragoza toward Valencia in the hope of cutting the communication line between Madrid and the sea. Theoretically responsible for this Teruel east front is the Leftist city of Barcelona, second largest in Spain, but Barcelona has been so busy with its bloody squabbles between Anarchists, Communists, Socialists and Left Republicans that it has been disgracefully lax at the front for almost a year.

With the quashing of the Anarchist riots and the formation of the more efficient Negrin Government at Valencia, a drastic effort was made to get Barcelona to bear its share of the fighting. Up from Valencia to take control of Barcelona’s military came greying, hard-bitten General Sebastian Pozas, ordered to instill a little efficiency into the Barcelona Government and to try to get a few Catalan soldiers into the trenches. Last week came startling news: General Pozas had finally taken the field at the head of a new army of 200,000 Catalans, and some of his troops had already won several towns on the Teruel front, others were threatening Huesca.

If true, here was something that might mark a turning point in the war, but the 200,000 shrank on inspection. Hardworking General Pozas was able to lead a Leftist offensive, but like all the rest it petered out before the third morning with no definite advantage.

Not until this Leftist offensive had burned itself out did the attack on Santander really get under way with an aerial and artillery bombardment as heavy as anything Bilbao was ever submitted to.

Rebellions. Word continued to seep out to the world last week of the great unpopularity of the war among humble people on both sides. Reports, never effectively denied, reached Hendaye of a revival of street fighting in Barcelona and other Leftist towns. Again & again stories came up to Madrid of abortive rebellions in Granada, Motril and Toledo. It was said that Italian troops, held in hearty disdain by Spanish Rightists since their disastrous defeat at Guadarrama in March (TIME, April 5), their poor showing at Bilbao, had been ordered to Toledo to remain in reserve for the eternally discussed final attack on Madrid. To make way for them, Spanish regulars were ordered to vacate the most comfortable barracks in the city. Firing broke out, the Falangist, Spanish Fascists, coming to the assistance of the Italians, and the Moors, always a little uncertain whom they were fighting and for what, joined in the fight in Toledo’s ancient bull ring.

Nin Mystery. A gruesome echo of a previous rebellion came from Madrid last week. Leader of the Anarchist P.O.U.M. (United Marxist Workers Party) largely responsible for the bloody Barcelona riots of May was one Andres Nin, at that time Counselor of Justice in the independent Catalan Government. When Valencia finally put the riots down, big Poum Nin and dozens of lesser Poums were quietly slipped into jail, then transferred to Madrid.

Few weeks ago rumors began to spread: Poum’s Nin had escaped from jail, he was planning even bloodier uprisings, the conservative Negrin Cabinet was in danger. Paris last week had a different story. Government gangsters had kidnapped Poum’s Nin from his cell, shot him and dumped him in a roadside ditch, just as year ago other gangsters (in police uniforms) murdered Fascist Deputy José Calvo Sotelo and unwittingly pulled the trigger for the entire war (TIME, July 20, 1936, et seq.).