The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [93]
But the Basques, most Republican exiles, even many in the Franco government, were convinced that the end was near. In July 1945 the Basque Nationalist Party had created an intelligence service to keep the United States informed on events in Spain, in preparation for the invasion. Convening his government in New York in late 1945, Aguirre told his cabinet, “We will return to our country, this year.”
The government-in-exile returned to Basqueland, to Bayonne, and even reorganized the cabinet in preparation for its new responsibilities after the anticipated liberation of Spain. In Spanish Basque country, ikurriñas were turning up unexpectedly on public monuments. Someone was painting EUZKADI, the forbidden word from the forbidden language, on walls in very large letters. Statues of the regime’s heroes, such as General Mola, were dynamited.
Then the Basque government made a decision that would change the landscape of Basque politics for the next two generations.
The government-in-exile contemplated three options: Should it continue an armed underground resistance? Should it organize mass protests and other types of political resistance? Or should it disarm and concentrate on international diplomacy? Putting its faith chiefly in the United States and going against millennia of Basque history, the government-in-exile chose the third option.
The United States and the Basque nationalists, according to Aguirre, were allies. All the way back to President Woodrow Wilson, who had mentioned Basques and Catalans as examples of nations struggling for the right to self-determination, the United States had been friendly to the Basque cause. The Basque Nationalist Party and the OSS had worked hand in hand. The Guernica Battalion had received American training and weapons.
Now, in 1947, the Basque government had no more money to maintain an armed force. The United States, Aguirre believed, would be its defender. The veterans dispersed, some settling in France, some in Latin America, some in the United States. A few refused to accept Aguirre’s decision and slipped into Spain to fight and, in most cases, were killed. Many would never return to their native provinces. Kepa Ordoki died at the age of eighty in 1993, in Hendaye.
While Telesforo de Monzón was living with his wife in St.-Jean-de-Luz growing raspberry bushes, Franco was summering in San Sebastián, eating, according to legend, with the silverware his troops had stolen from the Monzón estate in Vergara. But the Basque government was confident that Franco, the leftover dictator of a destroyed alliance, could not hold out much longer, with his country impoverished and isolated. Basque shipbuilding was barely functioning, Altos Hornos de Vizcaya had laid off half its work force, and trade unions were calling general strikes. The Franco government responded by sending thousands of Guardia Civil and police to Bilbao.
Then salvation came to Franco from unexpected places such as Prague, taken over by a Communist coup in 1948. The world was being divided into Communists and anti-Communists, and Franco was a long-standing anti-Communist—one of his few consistencies. The two Germanies declared separate capitals in 1949. In June 1950, the United States went to war in Korea. Two months after the Korean War began, the U.S. Congress authorized $62 million in credit for Franco’s anti-Communist Spain. The following year France removed the diplomatic status of the Basque government office in Paris, expelling Basques from the city they had helped liberate and turning the building, near the Eiffel Tower, back into the Spanish Embassy.
THE COLD WAR rescued Franco’s regime at a desperate last moment. While the rest of Europe had been recovering from the destruction of World War II, Spain was becoming poorer. In 1950, Spanish meat consumption per capita was half