In July 1936, a Spanish general exiled in France He received an emissary in Vichy who made him a very specific offer: take charge of the Military Junta that would direct the forces of the Spanish Army that a few days ago they had rebelled against the republic. Severiano Martínez Anido (El Ferrol, 1862-Valladolid, 1938), who was vice president of the board of directors of Miguel Primo de Rivera during the previous dictatorship and brutal repressor of the Barcelona labor movement between 1919 and 1922, according to a pair of hitherto unpublished documents, he received and rejected the offer, thus leaving free passage to General Miguel Cabanellas (and not Francisco Franco as he seems to implicitly propose in his response), who would occupy this position for two months, before Franco was ousted as head of state and Caudillo. If his answer had been positive, the history of Spain could have changed, a little or a lot. This episode has now come to light with the publication by historians Xavier Casals and Enric Ucelay-Da Cal of those two notes, which they reproduce in their book ‘The fascio of the Ramblas. The Catalan origins of Spanish fascism’ (Ed. Past & Present).
The book by Casals and Ucelay-Da Cal dedicates three pages to this frustrated bifurcation of the course of events of the Spanish civil war: sYour book focuses on offering a new interpretation of the origins of Spanish fascism, whose first generation is located in Barcelona under the aegis of generals Milans del Bosch and Martínez Anido between 1919 and 1922 and which deserves a separate review. But it contains an ‘Easter egg’ that Casals came across, in 2017, examining the unclassified papers of the former governor (successively, civil and military) of Barcelona, deposited in the Salamanca archive.
Four days of vertigo
This is how events unfolded. The conspirators had planned that General José Sanjurjo, exiled in Portugal, will arrive to take command of the pronouncement that was unleashed on July 17 and that General Emilio Mola had concocted from Pamplona as “Director” of the conspiracy. But Sanjurjo’s plane crashes while trying to take off in Cascais on July 20, and the blow is beheaded. The temporary solution is create a National Defense Board, who happens to lead on July 24 the most senior major general, Cabanellas. Meanwhile, the effective command of the forces in the field remains in the hands of Frank, in the south, and cool in the north. But in those four days things happened: General Mola did not propose only Cabanellas to occupy the position, according to the documentation unearthed by Casals and Ucelay. He also did it (before?) to Martínez Anido. And this, most senior in the ranks and, as both historians remember, with a great influence among his comrades in arms, he would have automatically been the president of the board. As the historian Julián Casanova points out, in that episode there was no debate but rather everything developed naturally, due to the weight of rank. Although he was not aware until now that there was another option than Cabanellas. With Martínez Anido, then exiled in Paris and who decided not to return until after the constitution of the Junta, that same dynamic would have led him to the presidency.
“He wishes you to preside over him”
The first of the two documents is a handwritten note from José María Quiñones de León, former ambassador in Paris and man for everything (apparently including nightly forays) of Alfonso XIII in the French capital. The general is not in Paris and Quiñones sends an emissary to the Hotel Albert I in Vichy to interview him, accompanied by this introductory note that Martínez Anido kept. “TO. He calls me that M. wants me to contact you right away to let you know that plans to form a government or military directorate within a few days, He cannot say when, and that he wishes you to preside over it. He wants to know, although he doesn’t doubt it, if he can count on you. Yes A. believes that it would be convenient for you to get closer to the border, and suggests that you go to Biarritz. The carrier will explain more.”
Casals and Ucelay have no doubt that M. can only be Mola. ALREADY.? The historian Angel Viñas, who has delved into the ins and outs of the conspiracy, believes it can only be one person. AND Ricardo Martínez-Anido, grandson of the general, is of the same opinion. It would not be Alfonso XIII but “Andes”, following the aristocratic custom of naming a nobleman by his title rather than his surname. That is to say, the Count of Andres, Francisco Moreno Zuleta. Minister of Economy with Primo de Rivera in the same cabinet that had Martínez Anido as vice president, those days he acted as Mola’s liaison in the south of France, installed in Biarritz, with his son acting as messenger between the headquarters of the rebels in Burgos and the French city. Both Moreno Zuleta and Quiñones de León were up to their necks in the conspiracy: the latter had participated in the Dragon Rapide rental operation to get Franco to Africa and those days Mola was using the old network of monarchical contacts abroad to demand Italian and German military aid (without any success, being surpassed by Franco’s maneuvers). The general’s grandson remembers that, four weeks later, Martínez Anido would cross the border through Dantxarinea accompanied by the Count of the Andes. And Viñas maintains that management, and that various options were explored, makes “complete logic”; taking into account the positions of each of the protagonists of it those days.
Rejection
Why did Cabanellas and not the former right hand of Primo de Rivera? Martínez Anido should immediately give a negative response, which he immediately justified in writing. In his papers, the handwritten draft of the letter is preserved, dated July 24, the same day the Board was established. “I don’t know how to thank everyone. the trust that you place in me, by proposing that I preside over the Government or Military Dictatorship that can be formed in its day”, he writes. But it presents three objections. First: without mentioning the name, it seems to indicate that the right man would be Franco: “A prestigious general, young and with all the other conditions that command requires, having taken the initiative, all the glory and responsibility must be for him, “without anyone else putting into practice the policy and projects that will save the country, after the difficult work of defeating the enemies.”
And before remembering that his age “is not the most appropriate for the work that has to be done to rebuild the country after six years of confusion and struggles,” he adds that “having been part of another Dictatorship, which has been so discussed, it is not the best recommendation to have belonged to it”. Close friend of Primo de Rivera (and in the 20s, architect of the repression of anarchism in Barcelona with the ‘fugue law’ and the Free Union as instruments), Martínez Anido adds: “The campaign that has been carried out against me in the last six years, regarding terrorism, without politicians or friendly press having uttered the slightest word of defense to erase unjust accusations, they have increased the black legend that my being named president would serve, more than to frighten the masses, to exacerbate contrary passions.”
Franco’s leadership would also end up being imposed. Cabanellas (a freemason, republican, although unabashedly involved in the conspiracy long before Franco), was the general of the Army of Africa who, with the most effective rebel troops, the moral success of the Alcázar and the material success of controlling the flow of foreign aid, who imposes himself as Caudillo. If a general with much more prestige like Martínez Anido had also given way to him, or had done so more slowly, it is fictional history. What really happened is that upon his return (if his “services and advice” are necessary, he already answers in his letter, remember that the rebels will always have him at their side), while Cabanellas did not grant him any role, Franco first awarded him the supervision of the fight against tuberculosis but, soon, the responsibility for public order in the first technical board and the Ministry of Public Order in his first government, in January 1938.
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Although they ended up disagreeing: In June 1938 he presented his resignation to Franco, seeing their competencies “mediated” by the Minister of the Interior, Joaquín Serrano Súñer, with whom he maintained a constant pulse. Although the election of Martínez Anido was a clear message of the heavy hand that could be expected, according to this letter, even he was rejected by how the repression was developed: although perhaps more due to a conflict of powers. The general complains that Colonel Ungría’s Military Police and Information Service supplants the functions of the police “to the point of detaining very respectable people, punishing detainees in a bloody manner in my jurisdiction to obtain statements, and other excesses.” and the inoperative overlapping of two ministries (Public Order and Interior).
According to Javier Tusell, Martínez Anido was quickly disillusioned and came to describe Franco as a “disaster” before the Carlist Count of Rodezno. His grandson maintains that according to family correspondence, he could have been under house arrest or a similar formula until he withdrew his letter of resignation and conspired against Serrano Súñer (which at that time was as much as against Franco) before Mussolini. He even points out that he died suddenly in 1938 “with the same symptoms that Cabanellas suffered & rdquor; that same year. The family and unpublished memoirs of his widow, he adds, show, with a private joke that is now indecipherable, that he came to feel openly uncomfortable with Falangist paraphernalia: “When I heard ‘Up Spain’ shouted, I said to myself under my breath: ‘Up, Moorish horse.’ And many times I heard him say: ‘I would undo this with one stroke.'”