WAR IN SPAIN: Fall Before Winter

Area this week of:

Rightist Spain: 126,583 sq. mi.

Leftist Spain: 70,024 sq. mi.

Rightist Gain: 9,503 sq. mi.

At 10 a. m. one morning last week Rightist commanders of troops slogging over mountain trails toward Gijón, tuned in the Gijón radio station. Over came a strange excited voice:

“We are waiting with great impatience. We are responsible people of Gijón and the enthusiasm in our streets is overwhelming. Arriba España! Viva Franco!”

Rightist army transmitters quickly got in contact:

“Our forces are very near Gijón along the coast. If the weather is good we will be there this afternoon.”

By 3:30 p. m. red-bereted Carlist militiamen were marching into Gijón’s streets under hundreds of white flags of surrender, most of them rudely made from bed sheets. Regardless of their political opinions, crowds on the streets cheered with enthusiasm. For them Gijón’s surrender meant an end of bombs and shellfire, most of all it meant food. Even before the fall of Bilbao, Generalissimo Franco discovered that food, of which his part of Spain has plenty, was the best Rightist propaganda he could use. So last week trucks loaded with bread, sausages, corn and rice started rolling toward Gijón from Vitoria and Burgos even before the Rightist requetés entered the town. An official note of surrender was sent to Salamanca signed by Colonel Franco (no relation), Gijón’s Leftist commandant of artillery.

Gijón’s fall was no surprise. Fortnight ago Leftist officials began deserting the town for France and early last week six aviators, the last of Gijón’s air force, reached France. Five reached Biarritz’s airport, the sixth crashed on the beach.

“There are no more planes in Gijón.” said one. “Against Franco’s aviation no defense is possible. Bombs rain on the airfield. There is no more ammunition for the anti-aircraft guns.”

If Gijón’s fall was no surprise to anybody one fact about it was startling to many. The last four weeks of the siege of Gijón and its final investiture were performed by Spanish troops alone. At least one foreign correspondent could not find a single cauldron of spaghetti among the rice pots of the Rightists, or a single Italian battalion among the advancing columns.* This was sound Franco tactics. Immediately after the Rightists’ formal entries into Málaga, Bilbao, Santander (TIME, Feb. 15 et seq.), Italian officers went about making chests to the vast annoyance of their Spanish allies. Today Franco likes to keep Italians out of the headlines as much as possible and Mussolini is willing.

The ultimate fall of Gijón was inevitable as soon as Santander was captured (TIME, Sept. 6). The only reason for keeping Italian forces on the Asturian front was Generalissimo Franco’s insistence that “Gijón must fall before winter sets in,” so that troops on the Asturian front could be transferred for another mass attack on Madrid.

What the Leftist Government could do to forestall this, last week it did. Besides fortifying almost the whole 300 miles of the Aragon front from the French frontier to Teruel, Leftist Premier Dr. Juan Negrin prepared to move his Cabinet, lock, stock & barrel to Barcelona. For this there were reasons political, mechanical and military.

Any serious Rightist offensive on the Aragon front must drive toward either Valencia or Barcelona; the latter would be far the richer prize. Barcelona’s defenses are strong. They will be stronger with the Government directly behind them, particularly since the fall of Gijón and Santander was largely due to what correspondents in Spain like to call the “fifth column”: sympathizers inside a besieged town or district who rise to arms as (presumably) “four” surrounding columns advance.

Two possible fifth columns exist in Barcelona, the usual group of pro-Rightists that exists in every city of importance in Spain, and Anarchists and other extremists who distrust the Negrin Government almost as much as they do Francisco Franco. To handle both groups, trains carrying 3,000 Leftist assault guards and troops reached Barcelona from Valencia last week, vanguard of the Government’s shift. At the same time Barcelona police announced discovery of the largest pro-Franco secret organization yet uncovered in the Catalan capital. Arrests and executions promptly followed.

At Salamanca, too, El Caudillo Franco did a little political reorganizing.

For many months German and Italian advisers of General Franco have been urging him to appoint a definite Cabinet (or its equivalent) so that they could present Rightist Spain as a formally constituted Government in asking for foreign recognition. El Caudillo has always refused to do this because of the incessant political bickering among his assorted followers, but strengthened by the fall of Gijón, last week a Fascist Grand Council for Rightist Spain was announced. The definite Cabinet duties of each member of the Grand Council had yet to be fixed. Among the five of its dozen members to be named last week was the 27-year-old daughter of Spain’s late Dictator Primo de Rivera, Pilar.

One cracker to last week’s decree was a brief paragraph empowering Francisco Franco personally to name his own successor as Dictator of Rightist Spain.

*Italy admits to having 40,000 volunteers in Spain, competent neutrals estimate not over 80,000, but on escaping to France last week in a fishing smack, famed Leftist Belarmino Tomás announced with a fine Spanish flourish, “110,000 Italian troops were responsible for Franco’s capture of Gijón and northwest Spain!”