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13 The Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Three weeks before the elections of 16 February 1936 that led to the triumph of the Frente Popular, a meeting was held in Madrid between the Socialist leader Francisco Largo Caballero and the Communist Jesús Hernández with a view to creating a revolutionary Marxist party. This was the clearest expression of the ideals of the Frente Popular. Yet when the electoral victory arrived, Manuel Azaña formed a government containing neither Socialists nor Communists, although both gave it their support in Parliament. Keeping to the announced plan, the Young Socialists and Young Communists joined forces on 1 April 1936 to form the Unified Socialist Youth, which would be led, following a consultative trip to Moscow, by Santiago Carrillo. When Azaña became president on 10 May, Santiago Casares Quiroga formed a new government in which the Socialists and Communists did not, once again, participate. Meanwhile , social unrest was growing, with a group of big landowners, financiers, and generals already conspiring to overthrow the Republic. Falange Española chose the path of direct action and on 8 May assassinated Captain of Engineers Carlos Faraudo, thus launching its campaign of pistolerismo. The following day the response arrived in the form of church burnings in Cuatro Caminos (Madrid). Tension mounted during the summer. On 11 July a Falangist squad assaulted the Valencia premises of Unión Radio (belonging to the Urgoiti chain) and broadcast a statement speaking of a coup d’état. The next day in Madrid its gunmen shot and killed Assault Guard Lieutenant José del Castillo, which produced the murder of the Monarchist deputy José Calvo Sotelo in retaliation. 240 The die was cast on 17 July, when the army rose in Morocco. That same Friday afternoon the government took control of Unión Radio, in order to use it as a mouthpiece for its official statements. The military insurrection plunged Madrid into chaos, as witnesses of the time later recalled. The Socialist Julián Zugazagoitia wrote that “smashed to smithereens, public authority was in the street, a bit of this authority being at the behest of each anti-Fascist citizen, who wielded it in the way that best suited his temperament.”1 Santiago Carrillo concurred, in that “effective power was in the hands of the workers’ parties and organizations, but each one wielded it as he saw fit and for his own side, which left a lot of room for uncontrollable types.”2 One of the victims of such anarchist incontrolados was Pepín Bello, Buñuel’s companion and friend since the Residencia de Estudiantes days. According to José Moreno Villa, a group of revolutionaries made a search of his house, and the finding of a fake parchment of the parodic Order of Toledo, invented by Buñuel in 1923, got him into a jam because he was taken for a genuine aristocrat.3 On 18 July 1936 Buñuel was lunching in the house of his friend Claudio de la Torre and his wife, Mercedes Ballesteros. A car suddenly arrived bearing an FAI patrol, one of whose members was a cousin of the maid who was waiting table. The maid took off her white cap in order to attend to the new arrivals, who asked her if there were holy images in the house. She answered no, and the patrol made off. It was a scene typical of those hours of disorder and confusion that would drive de la Torre to later take refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Madrid. Given that years later Buñuel stated that in such circumstances he went to ask Santiago Carrillo for a gun, it is well to remember what the reaction of the authorities was with regard to handing out weapons to the people. On 18 July Casares Quiroga—who in addition to being head of government was minister of war—refused to distribute arms, against the opinion of his minister of the interior, General Sebastián Pozas, and declared, “Whoever supplies arms without my consent will be shot.” At 9 p.m. on that same date of 18 July the Central Committee of the PCE and the Executive Commission of the PSOE issued statements mobilizing all their militants and offering themselves to the government . And on the night of 18–19 July, disobeying orders, Lieutenant Colonel of Artillery Rodrigo Gil issued five thousand rifles from the artillery depot, with which the JSU (Unified Socialist Youth) and UGT (General Union of...

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