The Lies of the Left in Spain (1934-36)

[Menydh]

The link between the two phases of the Spanish Civil War
by Pío Moa¹

Of the factors that frustrated the insurrection of 1934 against the legitimate Government of the Republic, the main one was surely the lack of a popular interest to the calls to war by PSOE and Esquerra². It is evident that, although the leftist parties encouraged social unrest as much as they could, the general feelings were far still from the level of hatred needed for a civil war, and thus the war feelings only grew among the miners of Asturias.

In July 1936, however, the situation had worsened dramatically, and that produced many thousands of volunteers in both sides of the conflice who where ready to take their revenge once and for all, and to end up with a situation that had turned unbearable. This different psychological attitude in the population has been barely studied by historians, and though it deserves most attention.

Examining the events of the time, we come easily to the conclusion that what transformed the general feelings so dramatically was the campaign started by the left parties around the repression of the insurrection of 1934 in Asturias. That campaign turned in the axis of all propaganda activity and all politics of the left, of its alliances and, finally, of the elections in February 1936, which brought about a government of the Frente Popular.

Juan Simeón Vidarte designed the campaign, according to his own account, taking as a model the campaign of 1909 around the execution of the pedagodist and terrorist Ferrer Guardia. This was a campaign with much historical resounding, since it broke the reformist aims of the Restauration. Vidarte, a distinguished Freemason -like Ferrer Guardia- and one of the main leaders of the October 1934 insurrection, tells in his memoirs how he resorted immediately to the international freemasonry, and to the leftist interationals. In Spain he mobilized to Fernando de los Ríos, Marcelino Domingo, to Osorio and Gallardo, and to many women, like the MPs Matilde de la Torre and Veneranda García, and other like María Lejárraga. Among these one women one got distinguised, La Pasionaria³, whose name started to become popular in Spain and to resound outside Spain, thanks to the fantastic Communist propaganda machine of Münzenberg. Misteriously, the Spanish Government did not detain Vidarte, and left him totally free to act; according to Amaro del Rosal, another of the leaders of the civil war of 1934, the reason why he wasn't detained was "the protection of the masonic triangle" in the core of the Government.

The campaign focused in the denounce of alleged killings and massive tortures, rapes of wifes and daughters of the Asturian mine workers which were also massive, sackings of their properties, etc. They brought witnesses who told of cases of extreme sadism and crime by the troops and police sent to the Principality to put an end to the rebellion against the legitimate Government. The members of the Guardia Civil were "one thousand times more cruel than the medieval executioners", and they practiced "the most inhuman torments". That not to speak of the Legionaires and the Moors.

They told all of that inside and outside Spain, "because the masses uprose to avoid Fascism in Spain". Of course that, despite the claims of the Socialists and the Catalan Left, there had been no uprising of the masses, and they knew perfectly well that there was no danger of Fascism in Spain, as I have explained in other occasions. But the legend was imposed through a much strong, dazing and tirelss agitation, indifferent to any contradiction of their own reports, or to any argument or report from the Spanish Government. Foreign intelectuals like Gide colaborated with them, more interested in showing off their humanitarianism than in the truth behind the denounces, French and English MPs came to Spain to "investigate", with all kind of visits and pressures. From San Francisco to Paris, they organized marches and covered the walls with posters such as this: "Spain in blood. Women and children slaughtered. Five thousand workers dead. Wounded casualties, tortures. Eight thousand wounded casualties. Seventy thousand Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, Radicals Republicans, political prisoners. Towns destroyed by the artillery, the air raids, the cruisers". Other posters drew masses of workmen unarmed and women with children in their arms facing or running away from members of the Guardia Civil policemen who, in ranks, were shooting indiscriminately. This campaign had so much success that its accusations have been repeated once and again, and augmented by generations of historians, especially foreign historians.

It was the constant repetitions without end of those accusations which created the right climate to restart the civil war, and this time the masses would not ignore it. A strong feeling for justice rose in hundreds of thousands of people, even millions, a hatred against a right-wing capable of doing such massacres, and the decission of stopping them to go back into power at any price. And on the opposite band, many right wingers considered that living with political parties and people capable of such campaigns of hatred was an impossible task. This is how it was built the fury which gave the elections of 1936 an open tone of civil war, a prologue of what was going to arrive in a few months.

In my book "El derrumbe de la República y la guerra" (The crash of the Republic and the War) I have analized with much care the contradictions, clear falseties and brutal exaggerations of this campaign. There was, no doubt, some abuses and crimes on the side of the repressing forces, something extremely difficult to avoid in such a situation, which where inferior in any case to the crimes committed by the revolutionaries when, in October, obtained the power in some areas.

But the most clear demonstration of the falseness of that campaign was the attitude of its promoters after the elections. All of a sudden, once they were in power, they forgot about their promises of investigating the atrocities and punishing those who were guilty. It was the parties of the right which, reiterately and without any success, invited them to open an investigation in the Parliament about the atrocities of Asturias. In the beginning they made up a commision presided by La Pasionaria, but it was never againg to be heard of, and which La Pasionaria did not even bother to mention in her memories. We could say that they no longer wanted "to know", as recalling other recent events. As Barco Teruel says in his excellent study on the insurrection of 1934, "How many denounces of illegal deaths were presented to the authorities and to the Parliament, and to the media of the Frente Popular when it came into power? No one gives the names of those who were killed in their thousands, in their hundreds, or simply in their tens, long after the fights were over, something really curious if one takes into account that the parties of the left had in their hands, since February 1936, the chance to perform a full investigation". There is also no news of the massive denounces presented by the sequels of the terrible tortures, sackings, etc.

The almost absolute falseness of the campaign did have, however, the most important historical effects. It wasn't the first time. I have mentioned earlier the case of Ferrer Guardia. These have not been the only campaigns of that kind, and for their historical importance they should deserve a detained mongraphic study of research, an idea that I offer to any independent historian who feels like doing it: something like "The great campaigns of political agitation in the modern history of Spain". I am convinced that they would shed much light over our past and, sadly, also over our present.



(1) Pío Moa, a revisionist historian, has published a number of books in the recent years exposing the lies of the left about the Spanish Civil War and its precedents, through a very serious and strict research of it.

He is most denosted by the left because of his political background. In his young years, he was an important member of a Marxist, terrorist group known as GRAPO (First October Anti-Fascist Revolutionary Group), and not from a traditional righ-wing family as they would have liked.

(2) PSOE is the Socialist Party in Spain, today in office. "Esquerra" is ERC, the Catalonian Republican Left. Today, as yesterday, they are allied in the destruction of Spain through a pact of governability in the Generalitat de Catalunya and in the Gobierno de España.

(3) Dolores Ibárruri, aka "La Pasionaria", was a well known Communist able of the most horrible crimes.