SPAIN: Riot & Rebellion

Most embarrassing of all Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s followers is the famed “Radio General,” hoarse-voiced, bibulous General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra, commander of the Rightist southern armies. Once such an ardent Republican that he was exiled by Alfonso XIII, Queipo de Llano quickly turned to fascism, was an active leader in the present civil war when Francisco Franco was still in Morocco. A violent self-advertiser, Queipo de Llano’s frequent personal broadcasts have become one of the high spots of the war. When his language grows too indiscreet his own electricians sometimes cut him off the air but his broadcasts, always boasting great victories and threatening death & destruction to all enemies, have continued. The Rightist southern front having been mouse-quiet for some time, last week General Queipo de Llano, from his headquarters on Seville’s Jesus del Gran Poder Street, told the world why:

“We are carrying on according to the laws of the hot season and all is tranquil. It is said that the Reds are preparing to attack us violently, but we hope that the heat will prevent it.”

This was the signal for the reopening of hostilities on the southern front. In a surprise attack near Cordoba a mixed brigade of Leftists went over the top in mass formation without artillery preparation. With only trifling losses they captured the village of Lopera. Under counterattacks they eventually were forced to retire but Queipo de Llano by talking out of turn had lost a tidy little cache of guns. On the far northern front without unnecessary’ talk, three Rightists divisions—the central one 100% Italian—were closing on Santander. This week with a backing of heavy artillery they swept through Reinosa 40 miles to the southwest—the Basques’ prime arms manufacturing centre in Santander Province and a prize rich in zinc mines, lignite, lead, oil—sent packing the Leftists as they tried spunkily to stave off the tide with a house-to-house defense. Meantime in the Soncillo region due east of Reinosa thousands of tons of Rightist bombs lashed down from the air.

Biggest war news from the Spanish front, however, was what went on behind the fighting lines on both sides. At Irún on the Rightist side the Spanish frontier was hermetically closed. Rightists explained : this was to prevent details of the advance on Santander leaking out to Leftist agents. Leftists explained: this was to keep news of new anti-Franco insurrections from the world. San Sebastian, theoretically completely calm since September, was reported the scene of one outbreak. Leftists reported that their scouts had heard firing behind the Rightists’ lines not in one but several localities. The reason generally given was bickering between the Spanish regulars and their Italian and German allies. Since friction of that kind had been rumored before, the Leftists’ reports were at least plausible.

Leftist Spain also had a serious back stage crisis of its own. Near-Communist Francisco Largo Caballero, seething with rage since he was ousted from the Premiership in May (TIME, May 24), finally broke with the increasingly conservative Negrin Government and announced that he was going to stump the country in opposition. It was no idle threat. Though the Negrin Government had broken the power of the Anarchists in Valencia and Barcelona and restored public order with the well-equipped recently reorganized carabineros, there are still over 2,000,000 Anarchists of varying shades in Spain. There are also other pinkos who will line up behind Largo Caballero on the grounds that they did not go to war to restore the same sort of bourgeois government that was installed in 1931.

The Negrin Government, however, can count on the full support not only of conservative Republicans but of Stalinist Communists who firmly believe that the fight against fascism is far more important than the eventual social revolution, who realize that only a strong central government can carry that fight through.

Still fishing for conservative support, the Negrin Government announced that though religious services could not yet be held publicly in Spanish churches there would be no further ban against private religious services, and convents were reopened. For a long time Spanish priests have been giving extreme unction to dying men at the front with no interference from Leftist officers. Hints likewise emerged that able General José Miaja was finally to be made commander-in-chief of all Leftist armies in Spain, a unification of command that has been the Leftists’ crying need for over a year.