The Franco Regime, 1936–1975

9. Francos Wartime Government

Franco'sWartime Government Radicalization of the Civil War into an intense revolutionary-counterrevolutionary struggle demanded a firm political structure and definition for the nascent Nationalist regime. How to accomplish this was not altogether clear to Franco, who inevitably had to devote most ofhis time during the first months of his caudillaje to pressing military affairs. He also had to find time for personal contacts with foreign representatives and to not infrequent pronouncements designed for public relations within the Nationalist zone. Thus more than six months passed before he began the construction of a new political system. All leftist and liberal parties were outlawed soon after the beginning of the war. All conservative and rightist groups contributed to the organization of militia forces and to the economic support of the new regime, although Gil Robles had fled the rebel zone early in the war after threats of lynching from Falangists. The latter held him responsible for Jose Antonio 's failure to win a seat in the 1936 elections, a failure that cost Jose Antonio parliamentary immunity and indirectly his life. Full support from what had recently been the largest of Spanish political parties was nonetheless pledged by Gil Robles from his new residence in Lisbon, in a letter of October 7, 1936, declaring to the leader of the JAP militia the group's complete subordination to the new military command.1 With moderate conservatism discredited by the terms ofCivil War, the key political movement in the Nationalist zone was the burgeoning Falange . It mobilized the great majority ofmilitia volunteers, and the political membership of the party, which had already multiplied during the 1. Jose Ma. Gil Robles to Luciano de la Calzada, quoted in La Cierva, Franco, 1:534-35. This letter was published in the press of the Nationalist zone on October 28. 163 164 II. The Civil War, 1936-1939 Manuel Hedilla Larrey, leader of the Falange early in the Civil War Franco's Wartime Government 165 spring of 1936, doubled twice over during the first months of the Civil War. Its radical nationalism, fascistic authoritarianism, and violent, military tone enabled it to win members away from more moderate groups and among the apolitical middle classes, while its loudly publicized national syndicalist social and economic program was heralded as the only norm that would enable Spanish Nationalists to win the political and social war against the revolutionary left. Falangists proclaimed that only a national revolution could defeat the Marxist revolution. The Falangists had the numbers and the propaganda but suffered from two profound weaknesses. The party had developed into a mass movement only under conditions of civil war that were totally dominated by Franco's new military government through martial law. Secondly, its leadership was very weak. All the top figures in the party had been in Republican jails since March 1936. The only one to be liberated, Onesimo Redondo, was killed while leading a militia column in the first days of fighting northwest of Madrid. With the fate of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera still undecided in the Republican zone, the remaining secondlevel leaders of the party, on September 4, 1936, ratified the governance of a seven-member Junta de Mando (Command or Governance Committee ) under Manuel Hedilla. Hedilla was the former Falangist provincial chief of Santander, and had played a key role in the party during the conspiracy as a clandestine inspector nacional trying to reorganize various of its sections. A former ship's mechanic and small businessman, he had little formal education but considerable practical sense and a reputation for honesty. During the fall and winter of 1936-37, Hedilla struggled to give a new structure to what was suddenly a mass organization. He tried with very limited success to coordinate far-flung militia activities and began to form a new party treasury to pay volunteers three pesetas a day (compared with ten pesetas daily paid Republican milicianos, a good example ofthe disparity in demagogy and discipline in the two zones). The skeleton of a new administrative system of party services was intended to serve as the beginning of a parallel state structure, while the Secci6n Femenina quickly blossomed into the largest and by far the most effective women's auxiliary service organization in either zone. The Falange's Auxilio Social soon became the leading secular welfare organization in Nationalist territory, helping to care for victims of the war and the orphans created by...