Aftermath

Victorious Generalissimo Francisco Franco proclaimed over the Burgos radio at 2:20 p. m. on March 29 that the Spanish Civil War had officially ended. His troops had occupied Madrid, Valencia, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Jaen, Albacete--almost without resistance. Italian planes from Majorca had made a last bombing trip over Gandia, British-controlled Mediterranean port. A few anarchist soldiers were still putting up a feeble resistance in isolated districts and clean-up campaigns were bound to continue for some time. But, broadly speaking, Generalissimo Franco was right: the war was over and for the first time in 984 days Spain had peace.

Food. After the war-weary city had displayed white flags from the tallest buildings and the Franco troops had taken possession, 6,500 truckloads of food for half-starved inhabitants began to roll into Madrid. New Franco money (the old Loyalist paper money was declared valueless) arrived by carloads to be exchanged for pre-war currency. Direct train service between the capital and Saragossa was restored after nearly three years. Sandbags piled up in front of buildings on the Gran Via were removed, shutters were pulled up, temporary boarding was torn down. The rooms of hotels long considered unsafe because of artillery fire were reopened. Barricades which had been carefully erected in West Madrid more than two years ago were torn down. For the first time in over two years Madrid was allowed to have electric lights at night.

The city which had once been the heart of Republican resistance soon echoed with cries of Arriba Espana! Viva Franco! The clenched fist became the upraised arm. Some 40,000 secret Fascist sympathizers --members of the Fifth Column--dropped their Republican disguise, took over the city even before the first of Franco's troops had crossed the Manzanares River and taken actual possession of Madrid. Out of hiding in foreign embassies and legations came hundreds of Franco partisans.

Among those who saw the last of Republican Madrid was Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., 23-year-old son of the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. He had gone to Loyalist Spain on a British battleship, then to Madrid on a sightseeing tour. He had put up at the spacious U. S. Embassy as the guest of Francisco Ugarte, the Embassy's caretaker. Marveled young Mr. Kennedy at Madrid's fall: "Did you ever see anything like it?" After attending Palm Sunday Mass, he went to Burgos, planned to leave Spain soon and report to Father Kennedy his observations and conversations with Loyalist leaders, Foreign Minister Julian Besteiro and Colonel Segismundo Casado. Young Kennedy wrote his honors thesis at Harvard last year on the legal aspects of the Spanish war.

Vengeance. But not everywhere was there unmixed joy. Lines of men and women streamed out of Madrid toward the coast, hoping somehow to escape the clutches of Fascist rule. Thousands of stanch Loyalists who feared for their lives if they remained clamored to board British warships, besieged consulates of neutral powers.

Pitifully few escaped. Old General Jose Miaja, Madrid's famed defender, flew with his staff from Valencia to Oran, Algeria. There he predicted that Republican rule would return to Spain "sooner than one might expect." Julian Besteiro remained in Madrid, was arrested, taken to Burgos and was expected to face a military trial early this week. Colonel Casado, chief figure in ousting the civil government of Dr. Juan Negrin from power four weeks ago, escaped to Marseille aboard a British ship. As his last official act he had issued a bogus proclamation to Communist leaders to mobilize for a last-ditch stand. When they reached their headquarters he had them arrested and carted off to jail to await the arrival of the Franco troops.

That not much mercy will be shown to Communists (who compared to the Anarchists were a moderate faction of Loyalist Spain) was indicated by New York Times Correspondent George Axelsson in a dispatch filed just after leaving Valencia shortly before that city fell. Wirelessed Newsman Axelsson:

"Some say there are 10,000 [Communists] waiting in jail to be handed over in their chains to the victorious Nationalists. . . . Why are they there? They are being held as ransom. With their lives they will probably pay for the lives of those who put them in prison while they negotiated surrender. . . . One might compare their lot to that of a bull, worn out by picadors, helplessly waiting for the matador to enter with a fanfare of trumpets to give it the coup de grace. This war, which has been incredibly cruel on all sides since its commencement two-and-a-half years ago, seems likely to end in an orgy of cruelty."

Secret Police. Members of the military tribunals which will try all Loyalists accused of various and sundry "crimes" arrived in Madrid soon after Franco's troops. An 8 p. m. curfew was clamped down; in many a Spanish home the knock of the secret police was momentarily expected and feared. Far from forgetting the Loyalist excesses of the last two-and-a-half years, Nationalist Spain was in a mood for wholesale reprisal and punishment. The new Government's authorities claimed that 250,000 of their sympathizers had been murdered by the Loyalists; they wanted "justice" in each case.

The bulging, well-documented Franco index (said to contain some 2,000,000 names) was being annotated from the personal memories of the Fifth Column. Moreover, a large portion of the Loyalist population was being forced, under the threat of punishment, to become informers. The Serenas, picturesque night watchmen who let people into their homes late at night for a small tip, were ordered for questioning. The two oldest inhabitants of any building in which ''murder, robberies, looting, arrests or any other offenses were committed" were ordered to appear before military courts. All those possessing documents, pamphlets, court records, books or newspapers of the Republic were ordered to surrender them. Anyone who acquired property since July 18, 1936 was ordered to prove that he had acquired it "legally."

The death penalty was prescribed for those possessing unauthorized radio transmitters or receivers or those who received or spread news damaging to the Franco cause. Other crimes punishable by death: sniping, robbing, pillaging, sabotage. Also high in the list of "criminals" were those responsible for having prolonged the war.

Serfs? By week's end 100,000 persons had been rounded up. The total number of prisoners had reached 600,000. From Spain came only vague rumors of the number of courts-martial that ended in death verdicts. Censorship was tight, the frontier into France was closed for all but a chosen, trusted few.

The fate of prisoners who will be allowed to live was scarcely a secret, however. In a special article to the New York Herald Tribune, Manuel Chaves Nogales, former editor of the Madrid Journal Ahora who left Loyalist Spain in disgust early in the war and has since been a neutral observer in France, gave his idea:

"The vanquished armies of the civil war, transformed into serfs, will be called upon to reconstruct the country without wages. It is in order to obtain this virtually free labor that the Spanish concentration camps have been created and that the Government is preparing a law based upon the principle of 'redemption through labor of political delinquents.' ... It is possible that the number of Spaniards retained in the camps may exceed 1,000,000. The law recently enacted with regard to political responsibilities, together with that on the principle of 'redemption through labor,' will convert this 1,000,000 men into 1,000,000 slaves whose labor will form the basis of the totalitarian state."

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