SPAIN: Pushover Victory

Generalissimo Francisco Franco moved into the spotlight on the Spanish civil war stage last week, took personal command of the drive on Santander, last important Loyalist stronghold on the Biscay coast. Anxious to bolster his prestige, chubby Franco stood behind his lines, watching as his Rightists, Moors, Italian “volunteers” rolled down the sloping hills toward Santander.

Playing opposite Leading-Man Franco were the Italian Generals Sandro Piazzoni, Attilio Teruzzi, former commander of Il Duce’s Fascist Militia, eager to avenge the Italian rout at Guadalajara (TIME, March 22 et seq.), the ignominious chasing by Basque fishwives during the Bilbao siege (TIME, June 28). A horse laugh went through Leftist lines outside Santander when they read a purported order issued by General Piazzoni to Le Frecce Nere (Black Arrows): “As the Black Arrows were the first to reach Bilbao, so they will be the first to enter Santander. With proud heart and bayonets raised, be ready to dash to the glory that awaits you.”

Foreign military observers, totally unimpressed at Franco’s proud declaration that Santander was “at his mercy,” described Santander as a pushover because: 1) only about 25,000 half-hearted Basques, Santandrians and Asturians remain to defend the city against Franco’s 60,000 Moors, Foreign Legionnaires, Italians; 2) successfully over the Cantabrian Mountains, the three Rightist columns can coast down the sloping hills into Santander; 3) no “iron ring” protects the city, only ill-concealed machine-gun nests on the hillsides, a few straggly strands of barbed wire.

Stubborn defenders of Santander province are the dynamite-throwing Asturian miners. Up in the mountains at the beginning of the drive, the fierce Asturians carried on guerrilla warfare against the advancing rightists. The Associated Press correspondent following the Rightists cabled a vivid account of a fantastic battle on one of the fog-hung peaks.

“It was a battle of ghosts—mud and blood-smeared ghosts struggling hand-to-hand in a dripping fog. Legionnaires crouched and climbed from rock to rock. One straightened up and plunged face down, with a bullet through his throat. Another with a broken leg tried to hop to safety, but slid off into the murk down the hillside. There were many casualties, but the Rightists pressed forward, groping almost to the muzzles of the Asturians’ rifles and machine guns. Hand grenades started bursting. Men were screaming. Bayonets were used as daggers. The struggle lasted for an hour. Then the Asturians fell back into the fog.”

Toward the end of the week, Basque officials packed their papers, fled to France. Sadly Basque Minister of Commerce Ramon Maria Aldasora admitted, “Santander cannot stand. It will fall, perhaps in a week, perhaps a month, depending upon the weather in the mountains.”

While General Franco strutted in the theatre of war, in Brussels Revue Belge published an interview in which he greeted the Belgians, promised that after “my victory” Italy, Germany would not be specially favored by the new Spain, that even France, despite surface Leftist support, would be treated with equality. Franco said he wanted to be friends with all countries except Soviet Russia.

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From Salamanca, Franco’s raucous-voiced “Radio General” Queipo de Llano, with his usual indiscretion, roared over the radio: “France’s day of reckoning is not far off. . . . She has always been a bad neighbor and always acted against Spanish interests.”