The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [74]
But then, on July 18, 1936, something happened that turned negotiations in the Basques’ favor—a coup d’état attempt.
The conspirators were not simply Fascists. Francisco Franco, who because of both political and military skills gradually came to be the leader of the uprising, was not a member of the Fascist movement. Because Franco was so nimble with ideologies, because he managed to direct a diverse coalition, not only of Fascists but of Carlists, monarchists, rightists, and clergy, historians have labeled his side in the Civil War after their founding act—the Rebels. His adversaries, those who refused to go along with his attempted putsch, have been labeled the Loyalists.
The uprising was largely a failure. Most senior officers remained loyal to the Republic, as did the great majority of the Spanish population. But the Assault Guard and the Guardia Civil were solidly behind the uprising, and in areas where these two armed factions were strong—a few pockets of the south and in Galicia and León in the north—the rebels prevailed. In Catalonia the Guardia Civil remained loyal, and the rebellion failed. Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa were safe because Aguirre, having foreseen the questionable loyalty of the Assault Guard and Guardia Civil, had managed to have them both disbanded in his region before the rebellion had occurred.
But the rebels did succeed in splitting the two Basques. Alava and Navarra supported the coup. Through the strange contortions of Spanish history, the Guardia Civil, which had been established to repress Carlist veterans was now allied with the Carlists, for whom the Republic was an unbearable assault on the Catholic Church. The Carlist stronghold, Navarra, may have been the zone where the rebels enjoyed the most solid backing.
The day after the coup, the two generals who had best established themselves were Francisco Franco, who ruled by terror with Moroccan tribal troops who looted towns, killed any men they captured, raped any women, and left behind sexually mutilated corpses, and General Emilio Mola, who took Navarra by popular acclaim. Mola was cheered in Pamplona, with Carlists lining the streets shouting “Long live Christ the King.” It was the kind of Catholicism from which Aguirre had tried to disassociate himself.
Securely behind rebel lines was Miguel de Unamuno, now seventy-two, master of sixteen languages—according to legend, he learned Danish because he wanted to read Kierkegaard—the venerated leading intellectual of Spain. He was professor of classical languages and rector of the university in rebel-held Salamanca. Franco’s headquarters was in the nearby bishop’s palace. Columbus Day, or “the day of the race,” as the newly empowered Spanish ultranationalists liked to call it, was observed in October 1936 at the University of Salamanca. A war hero was on the dais: General José Millán Astray of the Foreign Legion, veteran of too many Moroccan colonial campaigns, some fingers missing from his one remaining arm and wearing an eye patch. Also present was Salamanca bishop Enrique Plá y Deniel, who had taken to calling the Fascist rebellion “a crusade”; Doña Carmen, the wife of Franco; and assorted other Fascists and monarchists.
And with them, officially taking the place of General Franco, who was unable to attend, sat the slender, gray-bearded, bespectacled Rector Unamuno.
He didn’t want to be there, but he had gotten himself into this unlikely position. Many of the generation of ‘98, including Pío Baroja, initially supported the Republic. But Unamuno, who had opposed the previous dictatorship, refused to support the new republic that had allowed him back into Spain from political exile. He had reached the height of his international fame by opposing the dictatorship. The daring rescue of Unamuno from prison in the Canary Islands by means of