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INDEX Prologue 1.
Review of the Past 2. Some
Antecedents 3.
Civil War Erupts 4.
Diverse Reactions 5.
Collective Letter 6. Some
Limitations 7.
Bestial Excesses 8.
Shameful Silences 9.
Anticlerical Violence 10.Franco
Honored by the Church 11.
House of Rebels 12. Dry
Bones on the Plain For
Personal or Group Reflection Bibliography
Prologue Seventy
years after the coup d’etat that meant the start of the Civil War, and
the subsequent dictatorship, Spain faces a burning problem, the recovery of historical
memory. There
are diverse and conflictive positions. For some it is a way of re-opening old
wounds. For
others it is a way of closing them. There is a known phrase by Winston
Churchill: “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it”.
According to a survey made by the Opina Institute, 64.5 per cent are “in
favor of investigating everything related to the Civil War, uncovering common
graves and rehabilitating everyone affected”. Antonio
Elorza, Professor of Political Science at the University of
Madrid-Complutense, believes that the moment is good: “The problem is that a
war mentality persists in some sectors. The key is to replace condemnations
and reproaches with dialogues and analyses. It is good that the
taboos and fears of the war be done away with. That there be freedom of
expression and that the people remember their dead”. José
Antonio Martín Pallín, magistrate emeritus of the Supreme Court, adds one
aspect: “The victors also suffered unjust executions, but they had 40 years
to pay homage to their dead. The other side did not have that opportunity”. In the
transition to democracy, fear of a new Civil war clashed with the desire to
know the past. The official renunciation of vengeance, essential condition
for change, was shaped into political amnesty which covered not only
those who had opposed the dictatorship, but also those guilty of crimes
committed in its service. The spirit of reconciliation and of consensus
inspired the Constitution (1978) which regulated social harmony among all
Spaniards. Now we
are before a proposed law which attempts to rehabilitate victims of the Civil
War and of the dictatorship. Many demand the application of International
Law for this issue: no statute of limitations, the right to know, the
right of justice, the right of reparation. In the last thirty years some
measures have been taken, but others await action. We know
more and more about what happened seventy years ago. And it is good to know
it: All discovery is light (Eph 4, 14). As in Galilee of the
Gentiles, the Gospel bursts onto a land in chains, in darkness, in need
of redemption: People who lived in darkness saw a great light; a light
shined on those who dwelled in a place of shadows of death (Mt 4, 16). But
what did the Church say, and what does it say now. The Civil War had a
profound religious character. It was lived as a holy war, as crusade, but was
it a crusade or was it madness? It’s not the same. They are two visions of
the past, not only distinct but also in opposition. 1. Review of the Past On
Sept. 30, 1936, then Bishop of Salamanca Enrique Pla y Deniel
published his pastoral letter The Two Cities. This is how he saw the
Civil War: “on Spain’s soil a fierce battle is being waged between two
concepts of life; two sentiments, two forces”, two cities, the city of the
godless and the city of the children of God; “on the surface it is a civil
war; but in reality it is a crusade”, “a crusade for religion, for country
and for civilization”. In
August of 1945, following the defeat of the fascist powers in the Second
World War, Pla y Deniel, being Archbishop of Toledo. said: “Let the time of
world peace be as well the time of the consolidation of internal peace in
Spain. The past civil war and Crusade amounted to an armed plebiscite that
put an end to religious persecution. No one wants an unnecessary revision,
which could take us to a new civil war”. In 1960, October 19, he would say in
the Pontifical University of Salamanca: “It was a crusade for God and for
Spain”. A
government decree dated 17 Nov., 1938, established, “pending agreement with
the ecclesiastical authorities”, that “on the walls of each parish church
figure an inscription containing the names of its Fallen in the present
Crusade, victims of the Marxist revolution”. A few
months after the end of the war, a History of the Crusade in weekly
episodes presented it as a religious crusade against Communist
barbarism. Later,
on April 26, 1942, the Franco government put into operation the General
Cause, whose prime objective was gathering evidence of Republican crimes.
The aim was to justify the military coup, the slaughter that provoked the
subsequent dictatorship.
In
fact, for forty years a single vision of the past was imposed, as the
English historian Paul Preston says in The spanish Civil War. But
another vision existed and exists. The Civil War was a “war between
children of the same birthplace, of the same mother country” (Pius XI), and a
passionate undertaking of hate and violence” (Gumersindo de Estella), a
“useless fratricidal slaughter” (Esteban Pinilla), a madness, as it
says in Psalm 85: God declares peace so that they do not return to
madness. Furthermore,
“that civil war was not provoked by the Republic, nor by its leaders”, it was
well-identified military groups who made “a full assault on power” (Julián
Casanova). The myth of the crusade was “one of the pillars of the regime,
which was untouchable even with the Caudillo already in his grave”
(Hilari Raguer). Well, if the Civil War was not a crusade, but a slaughter
among brothers, a madness, we must examine the position of the Church: was it
belligerant? did it legitimize the coup, the Civil War and the subsequent
dictatorship?, what did anticlerical violence signify? is a national confession
needed, and an ecclesiastical confession? The Civil War is a “demon” that
must be expelled from our house: Every kingdom in civil war is headed for
ruin (Lk 11, 15-26). One thing is to give one’s life for Christ and
another very different thing is take it away from others in the name of
Christ. You can’t evangelize “a clean blow for Christ”. The so-called
re-christianization of Spain could not have been carried out by force, with
weapons. That is precisely the temptation of power (Mt 4,9), the way that he
who came to give his life so that others are saved did not want to
follow (Mk 10, 45). He said so clearly: My kingdom is not of this world.
If my kingdom was of this world, my people would have fought (Jn 1836). 2. Some antecedents On
April 14, 1931, after municipal elections of the 12th, the Republic
was proclaimed. For the first time, political power was passed on to a
moderate left, which was formed by socialists and a wide range of people from
the lower middle class. King Alphonse XIII abandoned the country: “The
elections held on Sunday clearly reveal that today I do not have the love of
my people”, he declared.
The hostility
of the right towards the Republic was displayed very soon. Three
principal organizations believed that the Republic, in one way or
another, must be overthrown: the Comunión Tradicionalista with its
Requeté militia; the old supporters of Alphonse XIII and of the dictator
Miguel Primo de Rivera with his political party Renovación Española; theFalange
Española, which in provoking street disturbances with “the dialectic of
fists and pistols” allowed the other groups to denounce the “unrest” of the
Republic. The
Republic also was confronted by fundamentalist bishops, partisans of a
confessional State that would impose the Catholic religion by force and
prohibit any other. Among them was the Cardinal Primate and Archbishop of
Toledo, Pedro Segura, and the bishop of Tarazona, Isidro Gomá.
The day after the proclamation of the Republic, Bishop Gomá wrote to Cardinal
Vidal i Barraquer the following commentary about the dethroning of the king:
“I can’t understand the monstrosity that has occurred. I don’t believe that
there are examples in history, which is filled with examples. May God
preserve our house, and peace over Israel”. A few
days later, on April 24, the Vatican’s nuncio Federico Tedeschini sent
a letter to the spanish bishops, in which he said: “It is the wish of the
Holy See that Your Excellencies recommend to priests, to monks and nuns, and
to the diocesan faithful, that they respect the constituted powers and obey
them, for the maintenance of order and for the general welfare”. After all,
that is what St. Paul says: Let every person be subordinate to the higher
authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist
have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes
what God has appointed, and those who oppose it it will bring judgment upon
themselves (Rm 13, 1-2). However, on May 1, Cardinal Segura issued
a pastoral letter directed not only at diocesans but all the bishops and
faithful of Spain, in which, practically calling for mass mobilizations, he
asked for “not only private prayers for the needs of the homeland, but also
solemn acts of worship, devotions, pilgrimages of penitence”. He also
delivered warm praise for the dethroned king, Alphonse XIII, who, “throughout
his reign, new how to conserve the old tradition of faith and piety of his
elders”. For the fundamentalist bishops, the old regime, the union of
throne and altar, had collapsed. The Royal
March, which during the monarchy was heard in mass at the moment of
consecration, became a sign of identity for the reaction and, in reality, a
provocation. On May 10, a group of young rightwingers, meeting in an
apartment on Alcala Street in Madrid, placed a gramophone in the window playing
the royal march, just at the moment that many Madrid residents returned home
from Retiro Park. Some of those who heard it went to protest outside the
monarchist daily ABC and the Interior (Gobernación) Ministery. There were two
deaths as a consequence of confrontations with the Civil Guard. The
next day, protests turned into torching of churches, religious schools and
convents, without the government using force against the perpetrators.
Agitation extended to other communities. About a hundred religious buildings
were affected by the blazes. Naturally, the violent response is surprising,
“but the burning of convents was scarcely repeated during the Republic,
except during the revolutionary days of October, 1934, in Asturias, and the
nearest precedent, the so-called Tragic Week of July, 1909, in Barcelona, had
occurred under the monarchy and had a more far-reaching effect than the
burnings of 1931”, says Julian Casanova, professor of Contemporary
History at the University of Zaragoza, in his book Franco’s Church. Cardinal
Segura maintained a resistance against Republican authorities that ended in
open conflict. On September 30, expelled from Spain and under pressure from
the Vatican, the cardinal renounced his position as primate of Toledo, which
would be occupied by Bishop Gomá. Angel
Herrera,
editor-in-chief of El Debate, founded at the end of April, 1931, an
association called National Action (later Popular Action), which had as
objective “propaganda and political action under the slogan of Religion, Family,
Order, Work and Property”. In two years Catholicism took root as a political
mass movement. The Salamanca lawyer José María Gil Robles created the spanish
Confederation of Autonomous Rights (in spanish, CEDA), which resulted in
the merging of Popular Action and some forty groups more. The
Republic faced great problems: military reform, the religious
question, the agricultural problem, equal rights between women and men. On
October 31 in the Congress of Deputies Clara Campoamor achieved
recognition of women’s right to vote. A few days later, on the 13th,
while article 26 of the Constitution was being devated Minister of War
Manuel Azaña pronounced the famous words: “Spain has ceased to be
Catholic”, which was interpreted thus: “the political problem that follows is
to organize the State in a way that it fits this new and historical phase of
the spanish people”. The Constitution
was approved on December 9. Here are some aspects: “The Republic constitutes
a unified State, compatible with the Municipalities and the Regions” (art.2),
“the State has no official religion (art. 3), “Spaniards are equal before the
law, without any discrimination for reasons of birth, race, sex, religion,
opinion, or any other personal or other social condition or circumstance.” (art.
25), “all religious faiths will be considered as Associations subject to a
special law”, “a special law will regulate the total extinction, within a
period of two years, of subsidies for the Clergy”, “those religious orders
that statutorily impose, apart from the three canonical votes, another
special obedience to an authority distinct from the legitimate State will be
dissolved” (art, 26), “all denominations will be able to observe private
worship. Public manifestations of worship will have to be, in each case,
authorized by the Government” (art. 27), “marriage is based on equal rights
for both sexes, and it can be dissolved by mutual agreement or a petition of
whichever of the spouses, with allegation in this case of just cause” (art.
43), “the property of all class of goods can be object of forced
expropriation in the name of social utility with adequate compensation” (art.
44), “cultural service is an essential attribute of the State”, “education
will be secular”, “the Church has the right, subject to State inspection, to
teach its respective doctrines in is own establishments” (art. 48). On
August 10, 1932, the uprising of Gen. José Sanjurjo in Seville was
brought under control. The law of Faiths and Religious Congregations, of May
17, 1933, caused commotion. Pius XI in his encyclical Dilectissima nobis denounced
the law that tried to “tear out traditional Catholic sentiments from young
souls”, “against the imprescriptible rights of the Church”. On January 11,
1933, in the village of Casas Viejas, Cadiz Province, a group of anarchists
tried to seize the Civil Guard barracks. Twenty two peasants and three guards
lost their lives in the tragic revolt. The elections of Nov. 1933 gave power
to the right. The new government decreed an amnesty for everyone implicated
in the coup attempt of Gen. Sanjurjo. On
October 6, 1934, Lluis Companys, president of the Generalitat (regional
government), declared a Catalan State within the spanish Federal Republic.
The Catalan Government was arrested in full session by troops led by Gen.
Batet. During the war Companys led the Catalan Government. Exiled in Paris
and handed over to the GESTAPO, he was executed by firing squad in Montjuic
on October 15, 1940. Barberous
and horrifying was the Asturias revolt in October of 1934. Thirty four
priests, seminarians and monks of the Christian Schools were assassinated,
and 58 churches, the bishop’s palace, the seminary and the Holy Chamber of the cathedral were burned or dynamited.
Minister of War Diego Hidalgo, entrusted leadership of operations to Gen.
Franco: “The Foreign Legion committed atrocities, killed many women and
children, and when Gijón and Oviedo, the principal Asturian cities, fell, the
Army carried out summary executions among leftists”, says Julián Casanova. In the second
half of 1935, Manuel Azaña held a series of mass meetings in Bilbao, Valencia
and Madrid. Enthusiasm for unity of the left led to formation of the Popular
Front. Elections of February 1936 gave power to the left. The
Institute of Agrarian Reform fomented the settling of rural people in new
lands, but it did so slowly because of the judicial actions filed by the
owners. “During the first half of March, farm laborers began occupying
estates in Madrid, Salamanca and Toledo and at sunrise on the 25th,
60,000 peasants took over properties in Badajoz and began to till them.
During the following weeks similar actions occurred in Caceres, Jaen, Seville
and Cordoba”, “in one of the scuffles with the peasants, a civil guard was
killed in Yeste. The guards retaliated by killing 17 farm laborersand
injuring many more”, says the English historian Antony Beevor in The
Battle for Spain. During the government of the Popular Front “somewhat
less than 200,000 farm workers were settled on some 756,000 hectares of
land”. On July
12, Falange gunmen killed José Castillo, officer of the Assault Guards. His
fellow guards killed José Calvo Sotelo, a rightwing parliamentarian. 3. Civil War Erupts On July
18, 1936, a military coup is staged against the legitimately constituted
order of the Republic. Franco starts it in the Canaries, Mola in Pamplona,
Queipo de Llano in Seville, Cabanellas in Saragossa. It is presented as a national
uprising, as “the defense or re-establishment of order”. With improper
exclusivity, the revolutionaries or rebels call themselves nationals. They
call the Republicans reds, synonymous of revolutionaries. In his
"instrucción reservada número uno", the Director (Mola) said in
April of that year: “Action must be extremely violent to reduce the enemy as
soon as possible”. The rebels counted on meeting resistence, but hoped to
crush it in two or three days. Those who opposed were eliminiated: “The
uprising was carried out over the bodies of generals Batet, Romerales,
Caridad pita, Campins, Nuñez del Prado Vice Admiral Azarola, Salcedo and many
chiefs and officials”, “the uprising began with the process of physically
liquidating enemies. And the response was in the same vein”, says Manuel Tuñón de Lara en La España del siglo XX, La guerra civil.
“The
slaughters did not take place in the areas where there was resistence. It is
worth noting that in places where the military coup triumphed immediately
violent deaths were counted in the thousands”, says Paul Preston. Inthe
Canaries, Ceuta and Melilla “the rebels killed 2,768 people; in Galicia,
3,000; in Zamora, 3,000; in Valladolid, 3,430, and in Navarre, 2,789”. Antonio
Bahamonde, who was press chief for Gen. Queipo de Llano and who fled to the
rebel zone, left horrifying testimony of the repression carried out by the
revolutionaries in his book Un año con Queipo(A Year with Queipo): “In
the city of Seville alone, and independently of all warring action, they have
assassinated more than 9,000 workers and peasants. In the working-class
neighborhoods, Moroccan regulares and spanish infantrymen combed the
streets of very modest, one-storey homes and threw bombs through the windows,
destroying and killing women and children. The Moorish hordes freely
dedicated themselves to pillage and rape”. In
Madrid many sympathizers of the rebel band were arrested at the outbreak of
the war and many were assassinated in the course of the “sacas” or transfers
of prisoners. Some 1,200 prisoners were shot at Paracuellos del Jarama and
Torrejon de Ardoz. They included many priests and monks. The
total number of dead, according to historians, approaches some
600,000, of which 100,000 correspond to violence let loose in the rebel zone,
and 55,000 to violence in the Republican zone. Morever, “not less than 50,000
people were executed in the ten years following the official end of the war,”
says Julián Casanova. At the
end of the war, says Antony Beevor, “close to half a million people” crossed
the French frontier”, “another 60,000 did not arrive in time and were seized
by nationalist troops”. Concentration camps sprang up all over Spain. In all,
including provisional ones, there were “190 concentration camps, through
which passed between 367,000 and 600,000 war prisoners”. Amidst
so much madness, Fernando Berlín gathers various profoundly human testimonies
in his book Héroes de los dos bandos (Heroes from Both Sides): “Hidden
within the two sides there were anonymous heroes who placed sense of humanity
before whatever political ideology, brave people who, at some moment, placed
their security in danger and, many times, that of their family offering
protection and shelter to refugees and did not ask them of their
affiliation”. The
historian Américo Castro would write, from distance and suffering, that “it
is false that there are two Spains”. That duality was only the “result of a
sinister mirage in which the hallucinator tries to kill his double and
commits suicide”. The writer Antoine de Sant-Exupery says it another way: “A
Civil War is not a war, it is an illness. The enemy is within. One fights
against oneself”. 4. Mixed Reactions We
witness mixed reactions to the spanish civil war. On July 31, 1936, the
Vatican’s Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, future Pius XII, presented a formal
protest to the ambassador of the Republic to the Holy See, Luis de
Zulueta, for the “reprovable violences” against sacred persons and things.
The ambassador responded to the cardinal deploring the excesses committed,
although excusing them because of the attitude of the clergy which, according
to him, had sided with the rebels, in some instance even with the firearms,
and insisting on the efforts of the Government to end the misfortunes. The
Archbishop of Saragossa, Rigoberto Doménech, declared on August 11: “Violence
is not carried out in the service of anarchy, but licitly en favor of order,
the Nation and Religion”. The
canonical magistrate of Salamanca, Aniceto Castro Albarrán, had published in
1934 his book El derecho a la rebeldía (The Right to Rebellion), which
was an incitation to rebellion against the established legitimate order. In
1938 he published another, Guerra Santa (Holy War), with a prologue by
Cardinal Gomá, who several times referred to as holy the the civil war begun
by Mola and Franco. Albarrán strains to demonstrate that the Church has
blessed the war and encouraged everyone in the battle. The cardinal says in
the prologue: “A holy war (like this one) demands at least a holy effort so
that the blood that it sheds be not sterile”. The
capuchin monk Gumersindo of Estella comments in his memoirs, published
in the book Fusilados en Zaragoza (Executed by Firing Squad in
Saragossa): “And then try and tell a doomed prisoner that priests are not
arbiters of the war and of death sentences…and that we do not take pleasure
in shedding blood and shooting the accused. Cardinal Gomá would not have
written those words during his final illness. I attended him spiritually
those last 12 days of his life. Prudence seals my lips”. Marceliana, sister
of the cardinal, sent some books to the capuchin postmarked July 10, 1941,
appealing to him to accept them “in proof of my gratitude for the spiritual
counsel that with so much love and affection you gave to my deceased
brother…who also knew how to value and be thankful for all that you did for
him”. For health reasons, Gumersinde was in Pamplona during the month of
August. He was there at the same time as the cardinal, whose health had got
worse and who would die in Toledo on the 2nd. According to the
capucine historian Tarsicio of Azcona, the cardinal “resided at the convent
of St. Joseph in the Magdalena neighborhood, visited the nearby capucine
convent of Pamplona Extramuros and confessed there”, “he went up to reception
and asked for a confessor”. It stands out that, prior to his death, the
cardinal primate also would confess with Gumersindo that he he had heard the
confessions of many executed prisoners. Gumersindo
of Estella is the religious name of Martín Zubeldía Inda (1880-1974). He was
in Pamplona when the war broke out. He had just celebrated mass. He picked up
a book and heard “a savage shout of joy”, which came from outside. A rural
guard screamed things like these: “The cat is now in the bag!”, “last night
they killed the civil guard captain in the door of the barracks because he
wouldn’t join the Movement against the Republic”, “early this morning they
grabbed some Republican councilmen of Pamplona and gave it to them good”,
“the Movement is now all across Spain”. Several monks, who were in the
garden, heard him with surprise, mixed with a delight that they could not
hide”. Gumersindo reacted another way: “I confess that I felt my spirit
overcome with fear. And from the depths of my soul burst forth a protest
againstthe murders. Violence is not Christian. God cannot bless a revolution
that begins with slaughter”. On
August 15, the abbot himself, presiding over a community of more than 70
capuchins, granted dispensation from silence, saying with visible pleasure:
“Today we eat hens confiscated in Guipuzcoa by our brave requetés
[Carlist militias]”, “when the Movement began, each day twenty-five, thirty
or more requetés ate in the community’s refectory.”Says Gumersindo:
“Meanwhile the slaughter continued. I went out to preach almost every Sunday
to various towns of the province. And I became aware of the hecatomb. It was
discussed in public and with the number of dead who were going to be buried
in the mountains, by the roadsides---On Sept. 8 I preached in Uterga. I
returned on foot. I
crossed the El Perdón mountains. And I was horrified at seeing on both sides
of the road and in the interior of the mountain pools of blood and mounds of
earth that covered cadavers, some of whom’s feet were sticking out at ground
level…I arrived at the convent with strong impressions that shook my
spirit and during the night pounded in my brain. What else could I do but express
my feelings? I couldn’t help it”. The
abbot reproached him for his “defeatist campaign” against the Movement. On
Sept. 11 he appeared in his cell and told him: “You’ve been transferred to
the convent in Saragossa and you must leave today on the first train”. “Very
well, I answered him,…I will be better there than here because here I am not
among brothers, but among spies and false accusers”. There I would live
between 1937 and 1941 the tremendous drama of executed prisoners, which I
describe in my memoir. On Sept. 14, Pius XI received in Castelgandolfo
some five hundred spanish fugitives, the majority priests, monks and nuns.
The Pope delivered a speech, which began with a lamentation for the victims and
a condemnation of Communism. He praised the “splendor of Christian and
clerical virtues, of heroism and of martyrs, true martyrs in the fully sacred
and glorious meaning of the word”. He spoke of his horror for that
fratricidal war, “the Civil war, the war between children of the community,
of the same nation”, “it has been said that the blood of a single man is
already too much for all the centuries and for all the land; what to say then
in the presence of fraternal killings that are still being declared?” He also
said: “Our blessing is directed in a special way to those who have assumed
the difficult and dangerous mission of defending and restoring the rights and
honor of God and of religion”, “difficult and dangerous, also because the
effort and difficulty of the defense has been excessive and not fully
justifiable, besides the fact that unprincipled interests and egoistic or
political intentions are introduced to confuse and alter the morality of
action and all responsibility”. On
Sept. 30, Bishop of Salamanca Pla y Deniel publishes his pastoral The Two
Cities. He turns over his palace to Gen. Franco and sends donations to
the Defense Junta “without official publicity, so that the Government of
Madrid cannot declare them rebels”. He consults Cardinal Gomá by letter on
August 31 and he responds on Sept. 7: “I did the same. All my support, but
without publicity”. Of the collection by Gomá, comments the benedictine
Hilari Raguer, there is no mention by his biographers, “which makes one think
that they did not consider it too glorious”. Nevertheless, Gomá himself
published in the ecclesiastic bulletin of Toledo the correspondence that he
had exchanged with Franco and the primate of Ireland, Cardinal MacRory, about
the collection. From that correspondence, from the restricted files of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the archive of Cardinal Vidal I Barraquer,
the following can be deduced. Gomá’s collection is presented invoking as a
principal goal “the reconstruction of temples and liturgical trappings in churches
looted and destroyed in the zones liberated by the national army”. For the
Franco government, the collection reflected a double purpose: first, obtain
foreign currency for the purchase of “military suplies”; second, denounce to
Catholics throughout the world the atrocities committed by the reds and
attract the sympathy of foreign Catholicism toward the nationals. In
response to the request of Gomá, the primate of Ireland, Cardinal MacRory,
raised from all the churches of the country 44,000 pounds sterling. Of this
sum, 32,000 was delivered to the rebel army. There’s no mention of what
happened to the rest. On Nov. 7, 1936, Gomá wrote to MacRory about the
destination change for the 32,000 pounds sterling, “so that, if it meets with
your approval, that act of charity and patriotism that the spanish Church
does in favor of our victorious Army, is used in its totality to purchase
sanitary material with which our injured and ill soldiers can find relief”. When
Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer appealed to all the cardinals of the world for aid
for the priests of Catalonia, MacRory replied that he had done a collection
(that of Gomá) and, being a poor country, he did not dare do another: “I
believe,” he said, “that the major part of the money deposited in the account
of Cardinal Gomá has been spend on munitions”. On Oct.
12, Día de la Hipidad y de la Raza (Day of Hipic Brotherhood and
Race), there was an academic act at the University of Salamanca, at which
various personalities attended, such as Carmen Polo, wife of Franco, Bishop
Pla y Deniel, and Gen. Millán Astray, founder of the Legion. Prof. Francisco
Maldonado launched a tremendous diatribe against Catalan and Basque
nationalisms, “cancers of the nation” that that had to be cut out with the
implacable scalpel of fascism. At the back of the hall, someone gave the
legionnaire shout of “Long live death!” and Gen. Millán Astray delivered two
automatic responses of “Viva”, while Falangists saluted with arms raised. Miguel
de Unamuno, rector of the university, took the podium and, among other
things, said: “I want to make some comments on the speech, if you can call it
that, of Prof. Maldonado. I will leave aside the personal offense that his
sudden explosion represents against Basques and Catalans. I myself, as you
know, was born in Bilbao. The Bishop, whether he likes it or not, is Catalan
born in Barcelona”, “I have just heard the necrophilic and senseless shout”.
Millán Astray screamed at the top of his lungs: “Death to intelligence! Long
live death!”. Falangists and military men reached for their pistols. Unamuno
added: “This is the temple of intelligence. And I am the high priest. You are
profaning its holy territory. You will win because you have more than enough
brute strength, but you will not convince. To convince you have to persuade.
And to persuade you need something that you lack: reason and law in the
struggle”. The
Protestant Church of Geneva published its position in Journal de Géneve on
April 17, 1937: “The civil war that bloodies Spain is the object of our
concerns. Mourning reigns everywhere, ruins accumulate. It can be predicted
that after the period of destruction will come a period of profound misery.
From now on, whatever the final result is, we know for certain that our
fellow church members will be severely affected. All the Protestant churches
have the duty to prepare to alleviate and help our people, in the measures of
their possibilities, as soon as peace is established. We should foresee the
reconstruction of destroyed temples, parrishes and pastoral centers.
Principally, we should not neglect charitable works, material aid to all the
families whose homes have been wiped away on in which the head of family has
disappeared”.
In European
Catholic circles Franco’s cause was criticized, especially after the
northern offensive of Gen. Mola would leave the marks of cruel and massive
bombings to break the morale of the civil population. Catholic Europe
deplored: “that a mask of holy war covers up a war of extermination”. After
the occupation of Guipuzcoa, a thousand people were executed. Among
them were 16 Basque priests, 13 diocesans and 3 religious. Cardinal Gomá met
with Franco in Salamanca. The
general promised him that there would be absolutely no executions of priests
“without joint respect for military laws and dispositions of the Church”. The
Condor Legion bombed Durango on March 31, 1937. 127 civilians died during the
bombing and an equal amount from injuries. Among the victims were 14 nuns and
2 priests. Even crueler was the bombing of Guernica on april 26. Although the
figures have been debated, the Government of Euskadi estimated that there
were more than 1,500 killed and a thousand injured. The lehendakari
José Antonio Aguirre denounced the bombings on the morning of the 27th.
“German pilots, at the service of the spanish rebels, have bombed Guernica,
burning the historic city venerated by all Basques”. Franco’s general
headquarters issued a communiqué which said: “Guernica is destroyed by fire
and gasoline. The red hordes at the service of the perverse and criminal
Aguirre have burned it and converted it to ruins,” “he has spread the
infamous lie – because he is a common delinquent – to attribute that crime to
the heroic and noble aviation of our national army”, “Aguirre prepared the
destruction of Guernica to blame it on the adversary” (ABC, april 29, 1937).
Two days after the bombing, George Steer published in The Times
and in the The New York Times a report of the bombing that went around
the world. In July
of 1937, the French thinker Jacques Maritain published a statement in
the Nouvelle revue française in which he criticized “the violence of
both sides”: “It is a sacrilege,” he wrote, “to profane sacred sites and the
Holy Sacrament (…) and it is a sacrilege to shoot as in Badajoz hundreds of
men to celebrate the day of Assumption, or crush under bombs, as in Durango
(…) the churches of the town and the people who fill them (…), or as in
Guernica, an entire city, with its churches and tabernacles, machine-gunning
the poor masses who flee”, “in the name of Holy War, that [terror] is carried
out under the insignias and pennants of religion, and the Cross of Jesus
Christ shines as a symbol of war over the agony of the executed”. Franco,
concerned about the repercussions produced abroad, summoned Cardinal Gomá to
an interview held in Burgos on May 10. He ordered the spanish episcopate to
publish a paper which, addressed to episcopates of the entire world,
“could manage to make the truth heard”. Shortly before, in mid April, the
Cardinal did not see it clearly: “Our country does not lend itself to
collective Documents”, he wrote to Cardinal Vidal I Barraquer (April 16,
1937). As for
the rest, Pope Pius XI had just published two encyclicals: one against
national socialism, Mit brennender Sorge (March 14,1937) and the other
against Communism, Divini Redemptoris (March 19, 1937). In Spain the
first was ignored. No daily newspaper published even a fragment and not until
February of 1938 was it published completely in ecclesiastical bulletins. 5. The Collective Letter While
Picasso was painting Guernica for the Paris International Exposition
(1937), Cardinal Gomá was preparing the collective letter of the
bishops. It was a different painting. In effect, dated May 15, the Cardinal
wrote to the Metropolitans about the “indication that I had received a few
days ago before the head of state,” requesting their views about the
convenience of supporting it. The
answer was affirmative. The Cardinal submitted to the bishops “a copy in
proofs” of the projected collective letter, so that they would read it “with
close attention” and reply “as soon as possible”. Supporting that high-level
initiative meant “giving authoratively our criteria of the national movement
and, especially, repress and contrast adverse opinions and propaganda which,
even in a large sector of Catholic press, have contributed to shape an
atmosphere totally adverse to it abroad.” The letter was dated July 1, it was
sent in August. The
bishops did not define the Civil War as crusade, but it made it
understood: “The spanish war is product of the clash of irreconciliable
ideologies”, “being war one of the most tremendous blows of humanity, it is
at times a heroic remedy, unique, to focus things on the hinge of justice and
restore them to the rule of peace. For that reason, the Church, still being
daughter of the Prince of Peace, blesses the emblems of war, has founded
militar orders and has organized crusades against enemies of the faith”, “the
Church has not wanted this war nor has it sought it”, “one of the belligerant
parts was heading for the elimination of the Catholic religion in Spain”. The
bishops issued a declaration on the cause of the war. According to
them, it isn’t found in those who staged the coup against the legitimate,
constituted government, but the legislators and rulers of the Republic: “This
war has been brought on by the temerity, the errors, perhaps the malice or
cowardice of those who could have avoided it by governing the nation
according to justice”, “it was the legislators of 1931, and later the
executive power of the State with its ruling practices, which insisted on
sharply twisting the path of our history in a totally opposite sense in
violation of the demands of nature and the national spirit, and especially
against the religious sentiment predominant in the country. The Constitution
and secular laws that underline their spirit were a violent and almost
continuous attack on national conscience”.
The
bishops justified the uprising, the war and the national movement. For
them it was a type of preventive war: “Russia, linked to the communists from
abroad, through theater and films with exotic rituals and customs, by
intellectual fascination and material blackmail, was preparing the popular
spirit for the outbreak of revolution, which was timed almost to the moment”,
it refers to “the doctrine of St. Thomas on the right of defensive resistence
by force”, “the military uprising didn’t happen, since from its beginning,
without the collaboration of decent people, who joined the movement in
masses, which, by itself, should be considered civic-military”, “the war is,
then, like an armed plebiscite”, “by the natural demand for defense and for
considerations of international character, arms and men from other countries
have come in aid of traditional Spain”. The
bishops denounced the excesses of the communist revolution, but
silenced the others. Furthermore, as anyone can see, there are many numerical
errors. Of the murdered priests, they say, “only secular clergy would add up
to 6,000”, “the number is calculated to be more than 300,000 laymen killed,
only for their political and especially religious ideas in Madrid, and in the
first three months more than 22,000 were assassinated. Thee is hardly a town
in which the most outstanding rightists have not been eliminated”. Apparently,
the bishops have a twin consolation. The communists die in
reconciliation, the nationalists (by the thousands) die in martyrdom: “At
death, confirmed by the Law, our communists have reconciled themselves in the
immense majority with the God of our fathers”, thousands of Spaniards gave
their blood to the shout of “Long Live Spain!”, “Long Live Christ the King!”,
“within the national movement there was the marvellous phenomenon of
martyrdom – of true martyrdom, as the Pope has said – of thousands of
Spaniards, priests, religious and laymen”. At the
same time, the bishops respond to some objections: “The Church is
accused of temerity and partisanship in getting involved in the fighting that
divides the nation. The Church has always been on the side of justice and of
the peace, and has worked with the powers of State, in whatever situation,
for the common good. No one has been bound up, whether parties, people or
tendencies”, “it is said that this war is of classes and that the Church has
placed itself on the side of the rich. Those who know its causes and nature
know that it is not so. Even recognizing some neglect in the fulfilment of
judicial duties and charity, the Church has been the first to urge that the
working classes be strongly protected by the law”, “the spanish war, they
say, is not more than an episode of the universal struggle against democracy
and statism… we affirm that the war has not been undertaken to create an
autocratic State over a humiliated nation”, “they accuse the leaders of the
national movement of crimes similar to those committed by the Popular Front”,
“all wars have their excesses; the national movement would have them, without
doubt; no one defends with total serenity the madness committed by an enemy
without feelings”, “all our admiration for the civic and religious virtues of
our Basque brothers,…but our reprobation for having failed to listen to the
voice of the Church and be realistic about the words of the Pope in his
encycle on communism”. 6. Some limitations The
collective letter fulfilled the condition that Bishop Pla y Deniel had
imposed previously, dated March 5, for a similar project: the collective
document should ratify “the general ideas expressed individually by all
bishops of the liberated zone in respect of the character of the present
war”. However,
Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer refused to sign the letter. It displeased him to
“accept suggestions from people outside the Hierarchy in its own matters”.
Detained in Poblet on the previous July 23, the Cardinal left a few days
later for Rome under the protection of the Generalitat.
The
Bishop of Vitoria, Mateo Múgica, also refused to sign the letter and was
expulsed from his office in October, 1936. In a letter to the Holy See, in
June of 1937, he explained his motives for not signing the collective letter:
“According to the spanish episcopate, justice is well administered in the
Spain of Franco, and this is not true. I have long lists of ferverous
Christians and exemplary priests assassinated without trial and without
judicial formality by people who go unpunished.” On Nov.
23, Pius XI summoned Franco’s ambassador, Antonio Magaz, and told him:
“In nationalist Spain priests are being shot as in the Spain of the other
side”. Magaz responded: “Holiness, I have only one thing to say to you. That
your words and your attitude, as a Spaniard and as a Catholic, give me great
pain.”. The Pope replied: “Ambassador, either I have not explained myself
well or the ambassador has not understood me”. The
Jesuit Alfonso Alvarez Bolado in his book Para ganar la guerra,
para ganar la paz (To Win the War, to Win the Peace) points out some
limitations of the collective Letter: “trivialization of the social conflict
that underlines the war”, the Church had identified itself with rightwing
movements, which opposed all social reform, workers and peasants could
rightly view the Church as a political enemy; “simplification of the Basque
problem”, the Church legitimizes the coup d’etat, while condemning Basque
nationalists who remain faithful to the Republic and defend its freedoms;
“there is a lack of sensitivity for the values of democratic order”, you
can’t identify the entire Republican side with the communists, the democrats
could see the Church identified with fascism (in the Letter Russia is
mentioned but not Germany or Italy); “the insufficiency and the dissembling
in respect to repression on the national side”, the Republicans could see the
Church as accomplice, because a programmed repression was in order and in operation
at the very moment that the Letter was written. In the
Civil War there are “many wars”. It is the culmination of a series of
struggles between the forces of reform and of reaction: between
regionalists and centralists, anti-clericals and Catholics, farmworkers and
large landowners, workers and owners, republicans and monarchists, democrats
and fascists. A
German researcher, Kristina Kayatz has compared the collective Letter
with the speech delivered three years earlier by Hitler, on Feb. 1, 1933. In
both texts one detects the same speech: if they win, the country will return
to what it was in an ideal past time; there is an appeal to the supreme
values of order, harmony and truth instead of the anarchy, ruin and lies of
the enemies; they are not normal political adversaries, but mortal enemies
rising from hell to destroy the Homeland; Germany and Spain face a grave
danger of communist revolution. On Oct.
1, 1937, three decrees from the Office of the Chief of State bestowed the Crusaders
Cross on these individuals: King Victor Manuel of Italy, Benito Mussolini
and Adolph Hitler. It was the supreme honor of the new State to those who
took part in the “crusade against communist barbarity”. In
reality, the Communist Party counted on few militants at the outbreak
of the war. The Montserrat nun Hilari Raguer says in her book La
pólvora y el incienso (Gunpowder and Incense): “In the Parliament of 1931
there was not one single communist deputy; in that of 1933, there was one,
and in 1936, despite the triumph of the Popular Front, communist deputies
numbered only 17 of a total of 473. Franco’s later propaganda released, as
one of the key pieces of the so-called ‘Juridical treatise on the legitimacy
of the Uprising’, some documents which claimed the communists were preparing
a revolution and even detailed the horrible crimes that they planned, and so
the military had no option but to rush ahead with its blow against the
revolution. But all historians today agree that those documents were false”. María
Luisa Rodríguez Aisa in her doctoral thesis El cardenal Gomá y la guerra
de España (Cardinal gomá and the Sspanish War) comments on the interview
that took place in Lourdes on May 22, 1937, between Cardinal Giuseppe
Pizzardo, secretary of the Congregation of Special Ecclesiastical Affairs,
and Cardinal Gomá. There were moments of tension between both: “Gomá came to
say to his interlocutor that his dignity and his office was at the
disposition of the Holy See”. Ricardo de la Cierva in his book Francisco Franco. A century of Spain underlines the importance of the
bombing of Guernica in the attitude of the Vatican in that interview and in
the position of French Catholic intellectuals such as Bernanos, Mauriac and
Maritain. From
Pamplona, on May 25, Gomá writes to Pizzardo that on his arrival “a red plane
dropped several bombs on the quiet city, which caused eleven deaths and a
score of injured. It is another proof of the barbarity of those who do not
know the most elemental principles of the rights of people and the laws of
war”. 7. Bestial Excesses “Every
War has its excesses”, said the bishops. In a forceful denunciation of them,
Julián Casanova writes: “They were so enthusiastic about the ‘religious
upsurge in the country’, with the ‘excellent Christian spirit of the troops`,
that they did not hear the screams of the tortured, the gunshots at dawn, the
moans of the widows”. One can understand that angry poem of León Felipe in Español
del éxodo y del llanto (Spaniard of Exile and Tears): “I’m going to tell
you / in another way; / the bishop / is he who covers up the Tragedy, / the
man of deceit”. Only in
Mallorca, the number of Republicans assassinated in August and September of
1936 exceeded 1,700. Georges Bernanos in The Great Cemeteries Under
the Moon (Paris 1938) gave witness to this violence. From Bishop José
Miralles the massacre at the cemetery of Manacor “produced not a word of
censure, nor the slightest reservation”. 200 residents were dragged out of
bed in the middle of the night, murdered with a bullet to the head and then
burned on a mountain. The Bishop sent to the spot “one of his priests, who,
with his shoes covered in blood, gave absolution between firings”. On June
8, 1937, notes Hilaro Raguer, the priest Jeroni Alomar Poquet was executed by
firing squad in the cementary of Palma, Mallorca, for having hidden a young
man who had fled from the mobilization and because his brother Francesc was
member of Ezquerra Republicana.
The
destruction of Guernica has remained a symbol of the atrocity of the war. It
was market day. “Eyewitnesses,” writes Antony Beevor, “described the
resulting scenes in terms of hell and the apocalypse. Whole families were
buried in the ruins of their houses or crushed in the refugios; cattle
and sheep, blazing with white phosphorus, ran crazily between the burning
buildings until they died. Blackened humans staggered blindly through the
flames, smoke and dust, while other scrabbled in the rubble, hoping to dig
out friends and relatives”. Those fleeing to the town from Bilbao “had their
original disbelief at the news changed by the orange-red sky in the
distance”. Between
July of 1936 and December of 1937, the bodies of 2,005 men and women,
including adolescent boys and girls, were thrown down the mineshafts of Caudé
(Teruel), one of which has an opening of 2 square meters and a depth of 84
meters. In his
memoir, Gumersindo de Estella relates terrible experiences he had
lived throughduring his years as spiritual adviser to the executed prisoners
in Saragossa. For example, that of Mariano Sebastián, of Molina de Aragón,
who told him “with a tone of bitter complaint that the town priest was to
blame for his execution, because he and the mayor gave bad reports of him”.
The Capuchin adds: “How much damage certain clergymen do to the religion of
Christ. And later, if there is a revolution and they kill priests, ah!, then
we are martyrs of Christianity…! And they want Christianity and the Church to
defend them and raise them in honor to the altars! People like that are
martyrs? But they are the ones who provoked the slaughter!!! Christianity
subsists despite the bishops”. Gumersindo
de Estella denounces the complicity of the clergy: “More than a few priests
have insisted on certifying a passionate enterprise of hate and violence with
a divine stamp”, “I say it with pain, I’m ashamed to say it, but it would be
worse to remain silent. In Spain, the Church has had occasion to prove itself
before its adversaries. And it has lost the opportunity. We could have
convinced those of our left that a duel to death is not declared against them
by the Church. Unfortunately and by the unforgivable faults of many bishops,
those of our left continue believing that such a duel to death is a reality,
and that we are those who have armed the power that crushes them and we have
blessed the weapons that have taken away their lives and destroyed their towns”. On a
certain occasion, a young military man, a judge for executions, approached
the capuchin and told him: “If one of the prisoners expresses to you the wish
to speak to the judge, I beg you not to call me”, “now nothing can be done
for a prisoner. I have not intervened in the trials; I am designated only for
this act. And then you have to take into account that if in whatever town
they insist on eliminating a person, whether he is a delinquent or not, they
eliminate him, because the tribunals, despite their good intentions, can make
mistakes in very urgent summary trials”. The judge withdrew without waiting
for any reply. The
taking of Malaga by the Franco and Italian forces was atrocious. A
minimum of 1,500 people were assassinated in the following months. From Feb.
6, 1937, an authentic stampede towards Almeria was bombed. The road was
covered with dead and injured, while many families lost children in the
flight. Some 40,000 people were able to arrive at Almeria. It was one of the
most tragic episodes of the civil war, “the calvary from Malaga to Alermia,
the pitiless crime” (Rafael Alberti). The
bombing of Barcelona between March 17 and 20 was also terrible: 875
killed, among them 118 children, and more than 2,500 injured. “During the
course of the war,” writes Anthony Beevor, “Barcelona was bombed 113 times by
the Aviazone Legionaria, 80 by the Condor Legion, (40 times between 21 and 25
January 1939) and once by the Brigada Aérea Hispana. Altogether, these
bombing attacks caused 2,500 deaths”. After the
taking of Valencia, on March 30, 1939, the so-called Column of Order
and Occupation Police initiated a cleanup that, until 1956, took 4,714 to
their graves, as well as the 1,165 prisoners who died in jails and
concentration camps. Between the years 1939 and 1945, at least 2,663 people
were executed by firing squad against the walls of the East Cemetery (now,
the Almudena) of Madrid. José
María Pemán, in his book Mis almuerzos con gente importante (My
Luncheons with Important People), comments on an interview with Gen. Miguel
Cabanellas, when the officer presided over the Defense Junta and Pemán headed
the Commission of Culture and Education. Speaking about the formulation of a
decree that would prohibit wearing mourning dress, Pemán said: “My general…I believe
the nationals have killed and are killing too many people”. Cabanellas
thought for almost a minute and replied gravely: Yes. “In Republican Spain,”
explains Pemán, “people were killed for personal motives, in the savage form
called paseo. On the national side military tribunals almost always
intervene”. Pemán
added: “My general, the experience is not difficult to carry out. Make a test
with whatever spanish cities whose inhabitants you know well, almost one by
one. Say, for example, Saragossa for you and Cadiz for me. Get them to give
you a nominal list of everyone executed by the national side, for this sad,
but no doubt necessary, function as example or warning. Look at both lists. I
can assure you that you would arrive at the conviction that the aim of
warning would have been sufficiently fulfilled with four or five per cent of
the dramatic and excessive list that fields seventy or eighty”. The general,
an old liberal, dismissed himself with these words: “Some day we will realize
that, as always occurs in these exalted episodes, there are shootings that
backfire”. 8. Shameful Silence “Between
July 1936 and early 1937 the nationalists allowed ‘discretionary’ killing
under the flag of war, but, but soon the repression became planned and
methodically directed, encouraged by military and civil authorities and
blessed by the Catholic Church,” denounces Antony Beevor. The
repression began as soon as a zone was conquered by the nationalist forces.
The first to fall, apart from front-line defenders who were assassinated as
they surrendered, were the authorities of the Republic, civil governors and
mayors, councilmen, political leaders and trade unionists, even though they
had not taken part in the repression by leftists: “Once the troops had moved
on, a second and more intense wave of slaughter would begin, as the Falange,
or in some areas the Carlists, carried out a ruthless purge of the civilian
population,” not only among the working masses, but also among the
progressive middle class that did not support the uprising. On
December 22, 1936, José Antonio Aguirre, president of the Government of
Euskadi, denounced on Bilbao radio the killing, persecution and exile of
priests “for the mere fact of loving their Basque country”, as well as the
silence of the Church hierarchy. Cardinal Gomá in his “open letter to Sr.
Aguirre”, which was made public on the following January 13, lamented the
fact, because the execution of a priest, as one of “God’s chosen”, is
“something horrible”, but noted that “the priest should respect the design of
holiness, ontological and moral, in which his consegration to the highest
ministries places him.” Anthony
Beevor claims that, “Even though most modern military chaplains carry
sidearms to protect the wounded, it would appear that only a few, if any,
Basque priests were given a pistol, and there is no evidence they used them.
The primate also chose to overlook the fanatical Carlist chaplains on his own
side,” many of whom used to absolve prisoners en masse before shooting them. The Bishop
of Avila Santos Moro Briz, published a circular in the diocesan
bulletin on Nov. 9, 1936, in which he gave parish priests this singular
recommendation: “When it is simply a case (as frequent as lamentable…) of the
sudden appearance in the countryside of a cadaver of a person apparently
victim of the revolution, but there being no official report or knowledge
that he has been condemned to death, simply let it be known that “his body
was found in the fields… and he received ecclesiastical burial”, but parrish
priests should be careful not to reveal the author or the cause of that
tragic death”.
Similar
guidelines were sent by the Bishop of Teruel, Anselmo Polanco, on Aug.
10, 1937, to priests and Church laymen. Deaths caused by “revolutionaries”
had to be described as “assassinations”. If the death was the result of an
“order by a military authority”, the exact word was fusilado (shot by
firing squad), but only “when this is reported officially as such or is
well-known”. In reality, says Julián Casanova, rarely was it described as
“officially” or “well-known”, because instead of fusilado a variety of
euphemisms were used: “accident related to the war”, “internal hemorrhage”,
“injured by firearm”. Polanco was assassinated shortly before the end of the
war. Hilari Raguer, the monk of Monsterrat, says: “Prior to the
elections of February, 1936, he had published an incendiary exhortation, with
crusade terminology (metaphorical then, but soon to become literal)”, “with
the uprising, converted to civil war, Bishop Polanco organized and financed,
certainly with funds from the Bull of the Holy Crusade, a guerrilla
force which from Albarracín by way of the discontinuous front of Lower
Aragon, penetrated the Republican zone to carry out acts of sabotage”. The
Montserrat monk adds: “I learned of Bishop Polanco’s guerrilla activity from
Rev. Juan Antonio Martínez García (q.e.p.d.), of the diocese of Tortosa,
nephew of the canon of Albarracín Javier García Blasco, who was captured in
Teruel together with his prelate and the General Vicar of the diocese Felipe
Ripio Morata”. Furthermore, Amador del Fueyo, in his hagiography, let slip
out that when Msgr. Polanco was made prisoner they removed from him some
money that perhaps came from the Bull of the Crusade, a fund which “usually
was destined for famous guerrillas”. The
Republic was prepared to release the bishop on the single condition that he
remain in Rome “in a discrete attitude, until the end of the war”, but “such
a generous offer did not receive an answer from the Vatican”, “indirectly it
was said that the Holy See found no canonical motives to impede Polanco’s
return to his diocese”. Polanco was beatified by John Paul II on Oct. 1,
1995. 9. Anticlerical Violence The
anticlerical violence in the Republican zone produced 6,832 victims: 4,184
secular, 2,365 priests and monks, 283 nuns. The figure was given by Antonio
Montero in his book Historia de la persecución religiosa en España (History
of Religious Persecution in Spain). The author points out that “in all of the
history of the universal Church there is not one single precedent, not even
among the Roman persecutions of bloody sacrifice, in little more than a
semester, of 12 bishops, 4,000 priests and more than 2,000 religious. It is a
religious fact of the first magnitude and it would be near-sighted to want to
reduce it to the narrow limits of spanish history”. It is noteworthy that the
author, in time, would become Bishop of Badajoz, where the mass slaughter
carried out by Franco troops was indescribable: “the blood flowed in rivers
through the streets”, “militia captured in the choir of the cathedral have
been ejecuted before the altar”, “the rebels have celebrated the Assumption
with a terrible slaughter”, says Tuñon de Lara. In the
case of Badajoz, where resistance was fierce, the nationals killed almost
4,000 people in one week. “The repression also was bloody in the
working-class sections of Seville, where workers opposed the coup, but in
Huelva, where the right took over with relative ease, the repression took
more than 6,000 lives,” comments Paul Preston.
Of the
2,365 religious assassinated, 794 fell in Catalonia and 454 in Madrid. The
greatest slaughter took place on Nov. 30 in Paracuellos del Jarama, closing
out that month of mass executions, brought to a halt by the naming of the
anarchist Melchor Rodríguez as head of prisons. 73 clergymen were buried that
day next to 175 prisoners. There were 51 Augustines from El Escorial, the
order who suffered the most killings in Madrid: 120. Alfonso
M. Thió, who was superior of the Jesuits imprisoned at the Modelo Jail in
Barcelona during the war, was leading spiritual exercises outside the city
when an anarchist patrol searched his house. The Jesuit could escape and hide
himself in a nearby wood. There, alone in the night, he thought about the
roots of that persecution: “It was evident that the new society emerging
in those days totally rejected Jesus Christ and his ministers. I asked
myself: do they reject the ministers because of Jesus or reject Jesus because
of his ministers? The first hypothesis is very gratifying, but the second is
also possible, and in such rejection wouldn’t there be be something of
Pharisaism?” This valuable testimony was preserved by the author of Los
Jesuitas en el Levante Rojo (The Jesuists in Red Levante), the historian
Miquel Batllori. “It doesn’t appear to be an insignificant coincidence that
the Little Sisters of the Poor were spared persecution”, observes Julián
Casanova. 10.
Franco Honored by the Church On
April 16, 1939, the war ended, Pope Pius XII delivered a congratulatory
radio message to Spain Con inmenso gozo “for the peace and the
victory”. On Feb.
9, with the Law of Political Responsibilities, the examining magistrate must
“request the urgent presentation of files of the person presumed responsible
to the Mayor, the Local Chief of Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las
JONS, the Parish Priest and the Commander of the local Civil Guard
Station where that person dwells or has as a last residence, in reference to
the political and social background of same”. This way, the parish priest was
implicated in a state system of repression.
The
victory parade was held on May 19. The next day, in an act of rancid medieval
flavor at Madrid’s Santa Barbara church, Franco offered his victory sword to
the Christ of Lepanto. At the door of the temple, he was received by the
Bishop of Madrid, Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, who handed him a bowl of holy water
so he could bless himself. While the national hymn played, Franco walked to
the altar under a ceremonial canopy held aloft by members of the government.
A picture is worth a thousand words. According
to testimony of Ramón Serrano Suñer, the Bishop of Madrid said to Franco: “I
have never spread incense with such satisfaction as I do now with Your
Excellency”. The general laid the sword at the feet of the Holy Christ, read
a prayer and dropped to his knees before Cardinal Gomá, who blessed him. They
embraced. Control of education returned to the Church’s hands. The
Republic’s agrarian reform was abolished. The Church obtained the monopoly of
religious practices. On November 9 State funding for worship and the clergy
was restablished. Women were relegated to housework, deprived of legal,
economic and cultural autonomy. And in August of 1953 a new concordat with
the spanish State and Holy See reaffirmed the official religion, formally
proclaimed the Catholic unity of Spain and recognized that the Chief of State
had the right to propose bishops. The
Valley of the Fallen (basilica, monastery, mausoleum) is symbol of diverse
realities. Franco conceived it as a “monument to Victory”, as “National Monument
of the Fallen”, “destined to perpetuate the memory of those Fallen in the
Crusade”, in honor of those who gave their lives for God and for Country”, as
his own tomb. It is “the definitive consagration of the memory of the
crusade” (J. Casanova), “the commemorative memorial of a military victory”,
“presentation in stone of the marriage between the Church and the new
regime”, says Isaías Lafuente in Esclavos por la patria (Slaves for
their Country). According to the decree of the Chief of State on Aug. 23,
1957, “the sacred duty of honoring our heroes and our martyrs has to be
always accompanied by the sentiment of forgiveness that the gospel message
imposes. Besides, the years of peace that have followed the Victory have seen
the development ofa policy guided by the most elevated sense of unity and
brotherhood among Spaniards. This has to be, in consequence, the Monument to
all the Fallen”. Working
on the Pharaonic construction, which was inaugurated on April 1, 1959, were
many political prisoners. According to the doctor Angel Lausin, “there were
14 deaths during construction”, “and there were cases of silicosis, a great
many. Almost all ended in death”. Santos
Juliá, professor
in the Department of Social History and Political Thought at the open UNED university,
makes this accusation in his book Historias de las dos Españas (History
of the Two Spains): “The Church had triumphed in a civil war, which had meant
a true hecatomb, but from which it had emerged restablished in the fullness
of its power. It had been, after martyr, executioner, completely without
commiseration for the defeated; quite the opposite, not only victorious but
vengeful: its clergy had attended the execution of tens of thousands of
prisoners once the war was terminated, sustaining with its presence and its
word a strategy of purging and cleansing”. The journalist María Antonia Iglesias, in her
book Maestros de la República. Los otros santos, los otros mártires (Teachers of the Republic. The Other Saints,
the Other Martyrs), makes a simple homage to the teachers assassinated or
victims of reprisals by the dictatorship. The former Minister of Education
José María Maravall writes in the prologue that “in nine provinces where
systematic figures exist, around 250 teachers were executed”, 25 per cent
suffered some type of repression and 10 per cent were banished from teaching
for life. In each one of the terrible stories collected here, says the
author, there is always a priest, a priest who informs, who slanders, who
with his deadly testimony – “of marxist ideas, atheist, doesn’t attend mass”
– sends the poor teachers to his death. 11. House of Rebels Vatican
Council II (1962-1965) and pontifical documents like the encyclical Pacem
in terris of Juan XXIII (1963) were the “authentic clarion that woke up
many”. “The conciliar documents and, above all, the will prevalent in Rome
and in the Church during the magna assembly upset what was defended and
preached in our country during decades”, affirms the Church historian Juan
María Laboa, in El concilio del siglo XXI. (The 20th
Century Council). On June
18, 1959, Cardinal Domenico Tardini, president of the commission preparing
the Council, sent a letter to all the Council fathers in which he expressed
the desire of the Pope to know their wishes, suggestions and observations.
Among the replies from the spanish bishops concerns about Church and State
relations appeared frequently. In no case did they express fear or worry for
the way they functioned. Rather, they tried to clear up some official concepts
or, even, export what they considered optimum relations. Cardinal Primate Pla
y Deniel said that “not only individuals and families, but also States and
nations were obliged to profess the true religion. In the nations where the
Catholic unit exists socially, the State must confess and protect the
Catholic religion.” No
small number of bishops wrote in the same sense. One understands their
surprise and alarm on reading the declaration of the Council Dignitatis
humanae on religious freedom, which clashes directly with spanish
judicial laws: “Truth is not imposed by any other means than the strength of
the truth itself”, “the human individual has the right to religious freedom”,
this right “must be recognized in the judicial laws of society” (DH 1 and 2) The Jesuit Matías García comments
in El concilio del siglo XXI: “No one denies the perturbation that the
Council and, more concretely, the DH declaration introduced into the regime
born on July 18, 1936, obliging it to modify the civil regulation on religious
freedom and the way of conceiving (/and, above all, of living) Church-State
relations. With the Council, so-called National Catholicism was left mortally
wounded at its root. The regime felt the blow from the first moment”. The
difficult evolution of the bishops was driven by the rapid transformation of
the mentality of priests, and by the smooth but decisive actions of the
nuncio Luigi Dadaglio who effectively helped with his episcopal
selections for majority changes in the Conference of Bishops. An important
landmark was the Joint Assembly of Bishops and Priests, held in Madrid
from 13 to 18 September, 1971. “The Joint Assembly,” writes Laboa, “signified
in the spanish Church the predominance of conciliar tendencies and
represents, in a certain way, the official entrance of the spirit of the
Council”, “a fundamentalist tradition which became monolithic had
characterized the last century of our Church, tradition confirmed and touched
by the terrible persecution of 1936 and by the years of Catholic exaltation,
unity and withdrawal”. The
Assembly confronted the position of the Church toward the Civil War. The
first speech, which dealt with the Church in spanish society, includes this
conclusion: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make a liar of God, and his
word is no longer within us (Jn 1,10). Thus, we humbly recognize and ask
forgiveness for not knowing at the time how to be true ministers of
reconciliation in the heart of our land, divided by a war among brothers”. As
Santos Juliá indicates, the word reconciliation had been adopted then by
everyone. The socialist Indalecio Prieto, at least from 1942, spoke of
reconciliation in a sense similar to that raised by the Communist Party in
1956; some words pronounced by Pla y Deniel on being sworn in as Primate of
Toledo served him to put forward for the first time a policy of
reconciliation, “confessing the complete truth and feeling shame for our
crimes and those of others”. But in
the Joint Assembly, included with reconciliation was a recognition of guilt and
a plea for forgiveness. And that was too much for 70 clergymen present who
voted against it. The conclusion fell short of the two-thirds majority needed
and could not be approved. A modification was introduced: “we have not always
known how to be true ministers of reconciliation”. Submitted to another vote,
the conclusion obtained 122 votes in favor, 113 against and 10 abstentions Cardinal
Vicente Enrique y Tarancón in his Confesiones comments: “It was
logical that that conclusion – of which the official media had spoken in
sharp and agonizing tones – would raise hackles in the conference room. I
foresaw this, but I believed sincerely and honestly that it was convenient
that that voice be heard – approved by bishops and priests, although it did
not obtain the necessary votes to be approved – in a meeting of that class in
order to begin awakening the conscience of many”. That
voice meant a national confession and an ecclesiastical confession.
Certainly, among other indicators, the civil war revealed the evangelization
deficit of our country, which – even having an old Catholic tradition – is,
nevertheless, a country of mission. The deficit was also revealed in the
attitude, against peace and justice, adopted in the face of such madness. The
attitude of the prophetic proclamation is also evident now: They and their
fathers rebelled against me until this day. The children have a hard head and
an incorrigible heart; I send you to tell them: The Lord says so. And they,
whether they listen or not, are a rebel house, they will know that a prophet
is among them (Ez 2, 3-5). The
transition to democracy was made possible thanks to an agreement for amnesty
and a beginning of national reconciliation. spanish bishops, revived
by Vatican Council II, supported the transition. The President of the
Conference of Bishops, Gabino Díaz Merchán, stated so at a special
Synod held in Rome (1985): “The Council has helped us be instruments of
reconciliation and peace amid spanish society, which in these years has
undergone profound cultural, social and political change”. In
effect, says Santos Juliá, “the representation of the civil war as a useless
fratricidal slaughter, the discourse on reconciliation, the tearing down of
divisions between victors and the defeated, the mixing of Christians and
Communists, and collaboration in common actions determined the appearance of
a generation of democrats before the democracy that had renounced the great
historical themes in favor of common vindication of rights and liberties”.
In that
context of social change and Church renovation, in June of 1976, the Conference
of spanish Bishops approves the catechism Con vosotros está, which
brings human rights into homes and presents them as “a clear sign of the
action of the Spirit in today’s world”. Here are some of the most important
human rights included in the catechism: religious freedom, education, worker
participation (the right to form unions, to strike), political participation
(the right to assemble and form associations, the right to vote, authentic
elections), the right to truly humane life (no one will be submitted to
tortures or punishments or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment). On the
occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the civil wear, the
Conference of Spanish Bishops says in a few words in its pastoral guide Builders
of the peace: “It would not be good that the civil war is converted into
a subject that cannot be discussed with freedom and with objectivity.
Spaniards need to know with serenity what truly happened in those years of
bitter remembrance”, “knowing how to forgive and how to forget are, apart
from being a Christian obligation, indispensable conditions for the future
reconciliation of peace. Although the Church does not pretend to be free of
all error, those who reproach it for siding with one of the contenders must
take into account the brutality of religious persecution unleashed in Spain from
1931. None of this, neither for one side or the other, should be repeated.
May forgiveness and magnanimity be the general climate of the new times. We
all gather up the inheritance of those who died for their faith, forgiving
those who killed them, and those who offered their lives for a future of
peace and of justice for all Spaniards”. After
the regression of a long pontificy, spanish Bishops now find themselves a
step backward. Some are canonized and not a word is said about others.
Pius XII was opposed to massive and indiscriminate canonization. A similar
attitude was adopted by John XXIII and Paul VI, who halted canonical
processes that from the end of the war arrived at the Vatican. Things changed
with John Paul II. Up to January of the year 2000 239 were beatified. The
Benedictine Hilari Raguer denounces the present state of things: “In
religious matters the lances are still poised, I won’t say as in 1936, but
almost. Not only does the vision of victors and defeated remain basically in
counterpoint, but also it unleashes more passion than when any other aspect
when the Civil War is dealt with. It is especially those defenders of the
notion of crusade and promotors of the processes of beatification and
canonization of martyrs of the Civil War who, after so many years of
delivering their version, react in a way that is very unscientific, with
special aggressiveness, when another, distinct, one reaches their ears”. Spanish
bishops, in their Moral Orientations for the Present Situation in
Spain, display concern for the “threatened reconciliation”: “Our recent
history is more agitated and convulsive than would be desired”, “a society
that appeared to have found the path to reconciliation and understanding,
once again finds itself divided and confronted. A utilization of the
‘historical memory’, guided by a selective memory, again opens old wounds of
the Civil War and heightens conflicting sentiments that seemed to have been
overcome”. For certain, war mentality spears in some sectors, which is not
good. However, memory is for all (finally!), which is healthy, just and
necessary. 12. Dry Bones in the Middle of the
Plain The
Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory laments the opportunity lost by
John Paul II during his last visit to Spain, May 3 and 4 of 2003. The
canonization of the priest Father Poveda, assassinated on July 28, 1936,
“would have been the opportunity of the Church to forgive and ask forgiveness
for its collaboration with the Franco dictatorship, and thus recognize the
thousands of families that are still searching for their loved ones”. “There are gigantic common graves
in Extremadura, where there were mass assassinations at the Castuera
concentration camp, in Asturias – 1,600 in Oviedo. 2,000in Gijón – and in
various parts of Andalusia. In Catalonia alone the regional government has
located 54 interments of this type, with 4,000 cadavers in Barcelona,” says
Paul Preston In
Spain there are more than 30,000 unidentified bodies which remain in common
graves. In the book Las fosas de Franco (Franco’s
Graves), Emilio Silva and Santiago Machías cover Spain from corner to corner
and in each cardinal point they find “territories sowed with horror”, common
graves in roadside ditches, gorges, wells and cementaries: graves in
Candeleda (Avila), Medellín (Badajoz), Pikoketa (Guipúzcoa), Palma de
Mallorca, Valladolid, Villarrube (La Coruña), Soulecín (Orense), El Fuerte de
San Cristóbal (Pamplona), Puerto de Pajares (León), La Barranca (Logroño),
Los Pozos de Caudé (Teruel), Las Minas de Castuera (Badajoz), La Sima de
Jinámar (Gran Canaria), Las Cañadas del Teide (Tenerife), El Barranco del
Toro (Castellón),cementerios de San Salvador (Oviedo), Ceares (Gijón),
Ciriego (Santander), Astorga (León), Mérida (Badajoz), Valdenoceda (Burgos),
Badajoz, Zamora, Talavera de la Reina (Toledo),Cartagena, Espinardo (Murcia),
Melilla, Colmenar Viejo (Madrid), Barcelona, Tarragona, Lérida, Gerona. And many other places of Spain’s
geography.
Commenting
on these things, on May 9, 2003, our group of Tres Cantos (Madrid) came
across the passage of the dry bones from the prophet Ezekiel: The hand
of the Lord came upon me, and he led me out in the spirit of the Lord and set
me in the center of the plain, which was now filled with bones. He made me
walk among them in every direction so that I saw how many they were on the
surface of the plain. How
dry they were! He asked me: Son of man, can these bones come to life? “Lord
God,” I answered, “you alone know that. Then he said to me: Prophesy over
these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord (Ez 37,1-4). Also seventy years!
The place that is in exile is a field of dry bones, without life, without
future, without hope. We must listen to the word of God, the spirit of God
must come, from every cardinal point, from the four winds, so that the people
in exile can return to their land, their place, their home. Or, what is the
same, rise from the grave, resuscitate, live. To return is to resuscitate.
Let’s be alert. A
living community has to place itself in the middle of the plain and
proclaim the word of God about the dry bones. FOR PERSONAL OR GROUP REFLECTION 1. The
recovery of historical memory in Spain is a controversial problem, before
which there are diverse and confronted positions. What seems to me the more
healthy, fair or reasonable? - it is
not convenient, it is a way of reopening old wounds - it is
a way of closing them, question of justice - the
people who ignore their history are condemned to repeat it -
dialogue and analysis are important - one
side honored its dead, the other side did not have that opportunity - according
to a poll, 64.5 per cent are in favor of investigating everything related to
the Civil War, uncovering common graves and rehabilitating those affected - many
call for the application of international Law: no expiration time, the right
to know, right of justice, right of reparation - a
single vision of the past was imposed: the Civil War as crusade -
another vision exists: the Civil War as madness - what
happened seventy years ago, we are learning more and more about it - it is
good to know it: all discovery is light - we
must review the past - we
must review the position of the Church - one
thing is give a life for Christ and other is take it from others in the name
of Christ 2.
Picasso did not explain the symbolism of the Guernica figures. If we examine
the painting from right to left, what do we find? What does it suggest to us? The
Valley of the Fallen is a symbol of diverse realities. Studying carefully the
photo we can indicate some 3. In
the five-year period before the Civil War we find some antecedents that we
should take into account. Which seem to us more important? Why? - the
proclamation of the Republic - the
hostility of the right - the
position of fundamentalist bishops - the
approval of the Constitution - the
organization of the right - the
coup of Gen. Sanjurjo - the
proclamation of the Catalan nation - the
revolt in Asturias - the
agrarian problem - the
formation of the Popular Front 4. Why
did Civil War break out? -
because of the uprising against the legitimately constituted order - as
defense or re-establishment of order - the
uprising begins by the method of physically liquidating the adversary - the
answer is in the same line - the
resources of the state come apart -
madness prevails 5. In
both bands there were heroes, victims, criminals, martyrs. What
experiences can we share? 6. What
do we think of the various reactions that the Civil War produced? -
violence is legitimate for the benefit of order, country, religion -
violence is condemned against people and sacred things - there
is economic collaboration with the rebels, but without publicity - a war
of extermination is presented as a holy war - one
thing is to conquer, another is to convince 7.
Analyse and comment on some aspects of the bishops’ collective letter: - it
doesn’t define the war as a crusade, but it suggests as much - the
cause of the war lies not with those who staged the coup d’etat, but in the
legislators and rulers of the Republic - they
justify the uprising, the war, and the national movement - they
denounce the excesses of the communist revolution, but not the others -
numerical errors are many - the
communists die reconciled, the nationalists (by the thousands) die martyrs - they
respond to some objections 8. Some
limitations to the collective letter: - it
ignores the social conflict underlining the war - it
simplifies the Basque problem - it
lacks feeling for democratic values -
repression on the nationalist side is overlooked or silenced - the
bishop is the one who covers up the Tragedy, the one who deceives 9. What
does anticlerical violence signify? What are the roots? Are priests rejected
because of Jesus or Jesus because of his priests? 10. A
revision of the past is necessary: -
Franco under a ceremonial canopy: one picture is worth a thousand words - national
confession, ecclesiastical confession: we did not know in time how to be true
ministers of reconciliation in the heart of our nation divided by a war
between brothers - they
are rebels - the
Church facilitated the transition - it
has taken a step backward - a
living community must place itself, as the prophet Ezekiel, in the middle of
the plain and proclaim the word of God over the dry bones. BIBLIOGRAFIA
ALVAREZ BOLADO, A., Para ganar la guerra, para ganar la paz, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid, 1995. BAHAMONDE, A., Un año con Queipo, Ediciones Españolas, Barcelona, 1938. BATLLORI, M., Los jesuitas en el Levante Rojo, Imp. Revista Ibérica, Barcelona. BEEVOR.,
A., The Battle for Spain. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London,
2006. BERLIN, F., Héroes de los dos bandos, Temas de hoy, Madrid, 2006. BERNANOS, G., Los grandes cementerios bajo la luna, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1986. CARCEL ORTIZ, V., La gran persecución, España,1931-1939, Planeta, Barcelona, 2000. CASANOVA, J., La Iglesia de Franco, Temas de hoy, Madrid, 2001. CASTRO ALBARRAN, A., El derecho a la rebeldía, Gráfica Universal, Madrid, 1934; Guerra santa, Editorial Española, Burgos, 1938. SPANISH BISHOPS CONFERENCE, Asamblea conjunta de obispos-sacerdotes, BAC, Madrid, 1871; Iglesia y comunidad política, PPC, Madrid, 1973; Catecismo Con vosotros está, Edice, Madrid, 1980; Constructores de la paz, Edice, Madrid, 1986; Orientaciones morales ante la situación actual de España, Edice, Madrid, 2006. DE ESTELLA, G., Fusilados en Zaragoza. 1936-1939, Mira Editores, Zaragoza, 2003. DE LA CIERVA, R., Francisco Franco. Un siglo de España, Ed. Nacional, Barcelona,1973. GRANADOS, A., El cardenal Gomá, primado de España, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1969. IGLESIAS, M.A., Maestros de la República. Los otros santos, los otros mártires, La Esfera de los libros, Madrid, 2006. JULIA, S., Historias de las dos Españas, Taurus, Madrid, 2004. KAYATZ,.
K., Manipulation
in der politischen Rede. Textanalissen der extremen Rechte, Peter Lang, Frankfurt, 1996. LAFUENTE, I., Esclavos por la patria, Temas de hoy, Madrid, 2002. LEON FELIPE, Español del éxodo y del llanto, Editorial Visor, Madrid, 1981. MONTERO, A., Historia de la persecución religiosa en España, BAC, Madrid, 1961. SPANISH BISHOPS, Carta colectiva de los obispos españoles a los de todo el mundo con motivo de la guerra en España. Gráficas Bescansa, Pamplona, 1937. PEMAN, J.M., Mis almuerzos con gente importante, Dopesa, Barcelona, 1970. PRESTON, P., La guerra civil española, Debate, Barcelona, 2006. (Original: Revolution and War in Spain, 1931-1939. Routledge, London 1993.) RAGUER, H., La pólvora y el incienso. La Iglesia y la Guerra Civil española, Península, Barcelona, 2001. RODRÍGUEZ AISA, M.L., El cardenal Gomá y la guerra de España, CSIC, Madrid, 1981. SÁNCHEZ, A., Cinco sacerdotes abulenses mártires en el verano de 1936 hacia los altares, Kadmos, Salamanca, 2002. SILVA, E.-MACIAS, S., Las fosas de Franco, Temas de hoy, Madrid, 2003. TARANCON, V.E., Confesiones, PPC, Madrid, 1996. TUÑON DE LARA, M., La España del siglo XX, La guerra civil, Laia, Barcelona, 1981. VARIOS, El concilio del siglo XXI, PPC, Madrid, 1987.
www.comayala.es Oct. 2006 Translated by LeRoy Ferguson |
On the morning of July 19,
Navarre, Avila, almost all of Old Castille, Salamanca, Zamora, Caceres,
Alava, Cordoba, Baleares and the Canaries were in the power of the rebels.
The German in charge of Business in Madrid sent this telegram to Hitler: “The
expected uprisings took place yesterday in all of Spain”. The coup d’etat
fractured Spain, consumed the State’s resources, but it did not triumph with
the predicted ease. In the last week of July, all of Spain was enmeshed in
the tragic gears of the Civil War. 
