“For a long time we had been expanding the airport of Gibraltar, building it on the sea, we sometimes had 600 planes agglomerated in that airport, within range and full view of the Spanish batteries. It was very difficult for the Spanish to believe that these planes were intended to reinforce Malta, and I can assure the House that the passage of those critical days was distressing. However, the Spaniards remained friendly and calm. They did not ask questions or put inconveniences”.
In these terms, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, addressed the British House of Commons on May 24, 1944, just two weeks before the Normandy landings. The operation that would end up unbalancing the Second World War in favor of the allies, but that required a lesser-known prior landing: that of British and American troops in North Africa in the so-called Torch operation.
Although the Blue Division was at that time integrated into the Wehrmacht fighting on the Leningrad front against the Soviet Union, Spain's collaboration in this allied movement –by omission– was decisive for its success, as the British premier recalled, who did not hesitate in concluding his intervention before the commons pointing out that Spain then rendered a service not only to the United Kingdom, but also to the cause of the United Nations. Also publicly and explicitly supporting the Franco regime for the first time from the international community.
Whether the Spanish position of looking the other way was the result of a perceptive strategic move, of the money with which the British Government itself and the banker Juan March had smeared the Spanish generals so as not to enter the war, or of the consequences of the frustrated agreement to Hendaye in relation to North Africa, this letting go helped to legitimize the dictatorship. It was, furthermore, what a Churchill needed who had already been highly critical of the misrule that the Republic ended up displaying and who, on the other hand, did not take a dim view of Franco's anti-communism.
This is how Diego Martínez Barrio, former President of the Republic and of the Government – for one day, July 19, 1936, when he tried in vain to stop the military coup – and former minister of various portfolios less than a month later, during his intervention in the assembly of the Republican Union in Exile that was held in Mexico City, which we offer in excerpt. Martínez Barrio presided over the Spanish Liberation Board, the first alliance of republican political forces after the war. It was the base from which the Spanish Republic in exile was articulated, which claimed republican legitimacy and which he himself presided over between 1945 and 1962.
For those who tried to act as interlocutors of the allies during the war, Churchill's statements were a severe setback when the articulation of an alternative to Francoism was still practically a dream in the face of the distanced positions maintained by an important sector of the PSOE, the PCE, nationalist parties like the PNV and the monarchist movements distanced from the regime, not to mention the anarchist movements.
Despite this, Martínez Barrio's call for dialogue and reconciliation of the republican forces, for the coexistence of all Spaniards and for the configuration of a democratic regime that emerged from the popular will through an electoral consultation does not fail to evoke the pacts of the transition that took even more than three decades to arrive. Of course, after the death of Francisco Franco and the institutions of the Republic in Exile as an inconsequential international actor.
“The situation presented by the monarchical restoration plan has passed. It has happened with such extraordinary rapidity that any intelligent spectator is amazed that what was possible yesterday, in a near yesterday, has now lost all chance of success.
”The slaughter of the proposals was unexpectedly carried out by the English prime minister. Well read his speech, a source of despair for the Spanish republican emigration, a sad page in the history of a man who has rendered such distinguished services to the cause of democracy, it is noted that not only is the immediate possibility of restoring democracy eluded Republic, but also that of the Monarchy.
”Churchill's allegation was directed against us, who represent the cause of Spanish legitimacy and legality, but also against those who represented or represent the monarchical cause. This speech has had an immediate and deep repercussion in the republican emigration, and not less in the monarchist semi-emigrated groups.
”The speech has made us glimpse the threats that hang over our country, the dangers that lie in wait for it, how difficult is the path that we will have to travel to regain freedom and how many and how influential are the enemies that, for one reason or another , has the independence of the Spanish nation.
”The repercussions in emigration circles have materialized in the desire to unify the emigrated forces. As always, impulse and feeling have overcome reasoning. It has been said, even by our friends, that they considered absolutely necessary the unification of the emigrated forces in a single discipline, with a single purpose, and an identical goal.
”They have not stopped to reflect on whether this unification was possible on bases and secondary agreements that would allow not only the negative program of destroying a regime, but also the positive and affirmative one of placing the new regime in conditions of viability.
”We, the Republican Union in Exile, are members of a political organization called the Spanish Liberation Board. The reasons we had for doing so were discussed, but the advisability of integrating that organization weighed on our minds for a consideration that was and continues to be essential and from the first we assigned it a mission, not as broad as the one that many wanted nor as narrow as the one that later they have tried to award to him.
”We had to carry out the mission of agreeing on clear and systematic principles as many parties as possible. For us, the clear principles were: unconditional adherence to the Republic, the reestablishment of the Constitution and the possibility that the Spaniards, once the Republic had been established and based on the Constitution, could, through an electoral consultation, freely express their political will.
”Since the day of its birth, the Spanish Liberation Board was attacked and several groups of emigrant opinion were left out of it, including parties that, due to their volume, tradition and significance – it would be childish to ignore them – weigh and will weigh in future destinations of the homeland; but even so, despite these limitations, some unfortunate, others not so much, we believed and believe that the fundamental basis for reaching an agreement between the political forces of emigration could not be, nor should it be, the program reduced to destroying the Franco regime.
”Even less that of associating our company with the enemies of the day before, who still have their hands red with the blood of our compatriots, our co-religionists and our friends, casting a veil, which would not be pious, but ignominious over the memory of past things.
”The program of a common enterprise concretized to the destruction of the Franco regime immediately brings with it this dangerous consequence. Let us imagine that the Franco regime has disappeared; All those who represented them have already fallen under the impulse of popular indignation; at the top of the National Palace the republican flag has been hoisted again; Justice has even been done, material justice, on the men who represented the regime and the forces that in common had prepared the realization of the historical episode already have the government leadership in their hands.
"And that? Hadn't an agreement on immediate achievements preceded this, on purposes to be developed next? Was the whole program framed and aimed at the destruction of the Franco regime? Well, the next day there would be a very sad spectacle. Before the rumor of the fallen power disappeared from the environment, we would demonstrate to the world the inability to raise the new greatness above the beam.
”The political parties, the workers' unions, forget a reality, which I always keep in mind, and that is that Spain is not totally, totally involved in the political parties and in the unions, and that the opinion movement Spaniard, overflowing the narrow limits of the organizations, would have to face us again if we did not have a constructive, effective plan, of immediate accomplishments, capable of normalizing the country and of allowing the Spaniards this thing so simple and complicated at the same time : to live.
”What I fundamentally fear, in any enterprise of emigration, which has as its only sign that of destroying the Franco regime, is that: unpreparedness. The day after the Franco regime was destroyed, what would rise above the rubble? I hear the answer: the Republic. The Republic, yes, but what Republic? A democratic republic, a socialist republic, a Soviet republic, a libertarian republic? Which?
”In order to discuss the surname that we are going to give it, should we launch ourselves in the midst of triumph to discuss as in the last and gloomy days of the fall of the regime and to seize the ministries, the barracks or the command units, to to conspire against our comrades, to shoot or be shot, those who are next to us and with whom we had carried out the common task of liberation?
”It is very difficult to eradicate misgivings from some men and from some parties. In my very distant youth, I knew and learned that a select, adventurous, heroic minority is capable of substituting itself for the will of the majority by conquering power, not through the channel that seems legitimate to me of the general will that translates its thought politician by means of some creations, but by that other more fragile and dangerous one of the conspiracy or the coup.
”That has been done and is being done in the world by class collusion, by means of a strike, or by a conclave of soldiers, masters of force, but in one case or another there must be a favorable national climate. Today, with the experience of these last years, coldly and serenely contemplating the panorama, I come to the conclusion that our country could not resist new experiences of that lineage.
”The Spaniards who really and effectively want to save Spain, the political parties and the workers' unions, if they wish with all good will to save Spain, have to make a commitment of honor, which they should not even mentally fail, and that is to put to the country in conditions of expressing its will. And once expressed by legitimate bodies and through normal channels, accept and respect the popular decision without trying to change it by other means than peaceful ones, that the laws allow.
”To reconcile wills, unite efforts, gather collaborations to lead the Spaniards to a new civil war, that is, to poison once again the barracks, the flag rooms, the professional offices, the workshops, the factories, the fields, even Placing trails of gunpowder from end to end on Spanish land that could catch fire is not part of our program and even less of our conduct.
”For us, who represent within society a sense of responsibility, austerity, devotion to the national cause, getting involved in the adventure of merely destructive companies is a political and moral impossibility.
”If the union of all the political elements of the emigration could not be achieved, should the conduct of continuing the war between these elements persist? I think not. It is typical of the Spanish character not to find more than two positions in relationship life: one, that of loving dearly; another, to hate deeply.
“Well, there are more in the world. It is not necessary, or even convenient within social coexistence, to treat each other as enemies or sleep in the same bed. There are various ways of living together. You can not be united with people or entities and yet deal with them and perform certain acts in common and even encourage them to achieve their goals along lines parallel to those that we follow. If they lead to the same purpose, there is no need to climb the fences and insult the neighbor, nor disregard one's own decorum, the sad proof of disrespect for the decorum of others.
”Within emigration it is almost impossible for all the groups and parties to be gathered in the same organization, but why shouldn't they be, if they have the same purpose, fulfilling the simple ethical duty of closing their lips and ears to all attacks on kindred? In this way we would avoid the embarrassing spectacle that we give to international opinion.
”I, from here, because I know that these words will have an echo in other places, I openly invite everyone, the anarchists, the communists, the republicans, the socialists who are not attached to the Spanish Liberation Board and I tell them that we submit to the servitude of not putting insults and insults against the opinion of others that jointly offend the one who receives them and the one who utters them.
”It is possible that in these moments of leaving a station we will not meet; we could perhaps meet in another one of transit and we would find ourselves, if we acted loyally, in the one of terminus. But let's not continue the profanity campaigns, which have been a justified reason for censorship for all international elements, prosecutors of the work carried out by emigration.
“I have said that we may not be able to meet now and we may not be able to meet. I repeat it. To meet, to find the Republican Union, we must start from an affirmative principle. We have pointed it out in the pact of November 26, 1943, from which we neither want nor should desert. This affirmative principle is symbolized in the restoration of the Republic, in respect for the principles of the Constitution and in the electoral consultation of the country.
”Those who are not satisfied with this can carry out work parallel to the one we carry out, but they will not be able to carry it out within the same discipline and the same direction as us. I do not censor the positions of others – you will have to note that in my words there are no censorships for anyone – what I am saying is that I do not share them, that the joyous fanfare (joyful within the sadness that invades our spirits and sometimes weakens the will) to go to the overthrow of the Franco regime without knowing what is going to be done the day after the fall, we are not enthusiastic.
”Regarding the Republican Union in terms of social class, in terms of vibrations of a citizen emotion that will have more or less echo in our country, I think it has greater adherence than the almighty dreamers imagine, it is preferable to remain at the margin of events contemplating the overflow of the waters, than collaborating by action or omission in new fratricidal struggles.”
