Friend or Foe?: Occupation, Collaboration and Selective Violence in the Spanish Civil War (Canada Blanch / Sussex Academic Studies on Contemporary Spain)

278 Pages·2016·1.197 MB·English

by  Peter Anderson

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“The empirical detail and the personal histories from each of the areas
examined make this a highly readable study. Its conclusion that
classification through collaboration lay at the heart of Francoist
occupation policy is a startlingly original one. It has long been accepted
that, throughout the years of his dictatorship, Franco divided Spaniards
into the victors and the vanquished of the civil war, what he consistently
referred to as ‘Spain’ and ‘anti-Spain’. Through his analysis of the
classification process, Dr Anderson has enriched our knowledge of how
the regime imposed control over the population, not just by the use of
state terror, but also by using the information gleaned from civilian
supporters to separate friends from foes.”From the Preface by Series Editor Paul
Preston
‘Today with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the Nationalist
[nacionales] troops have achieved their final military objectives. The war is
over.’ With these two sentences, on 1 April 1939, General Franco announced
that his writ ran across the whole of Spain. His words marked a high point for
those who had flocked to Franco’s side and since the start of the Civil War in
July 1936 had carried out what they regarded as the steady occupation of the
country. The history of this occupation remains conspicuous by its absence and
the term occupation lies discredited for many historians. The danger of leaving
the history of the occupation unexplored, however, is that a major process
designed to control the conquered population remains in the shadows and,
unlike many other European countries, the view of occupation as an imposition
by outsiders remains unchallenged.
Friend or Foe? explores how Francoist occupation saw members of the state
and society collaborate to win control of Spanish society. At the heart of the
process lay the challenging task in civil war of distinguishing between supporter
and opponent. Occupation also witnessed a move from arbitrary violence towards
selecting opponents for carefully graded punishment. Such selection depended
upon fine-grained information about vast swathes of the population. The massive
scale of the surveillance meant that regime officials depended on collaborators
within the community to furnish them with the information needed to write
huge numbers of biographies. Accordingly, knowledge as a form of power
became as crucial as naked force as neighbours of the defeated helped define who
would gain reward as a friend and who would suffer punishment as a foe.
Cover illustration: Prisoners Captured in Utrera, Copyright ICAS-SAHP, Fototeca
Municipal de Sevilla, Archivo Serrano.
Peter Anderson is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History in the
School of History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Francoist
Military Trials: Terror and Complicity, 1939–1945 (New York: Routledge, 2010).
With Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco he is co-editor of Mass Killings and Violence
in Spain, 1936–1952: Grappling with the Past(New York: Routledge, 2015).
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The Cañada Blanch / Sussex Academic
Studies on Contemporary Spain
General Editor: Professor Paul Preston, London School of Economics
A list of all published titles in the series is available on the Press website.
More recently published works are presented below.
Peter Anderson, Friend or Foe?: Occupation, Collaboration and Selective Violence
in the Spanish Civil War.
Margaret Joan Anstee, JB – An Unlikely Spanish Don: The Life and Times of
Professor John Brande Trend.
Richard Barker, Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Ground: Repression,
Victimization and Humiliation in a Small Andalusian Town – The Human
Consequences of the Spanish Civil War.
Germà Bel,Infrastructure and the Political Economy of Nation Building in Spain,
1720–2010.
Germà Bel, Disdain, Distrust, and Dissolution: The Surge of Support for
Independence in Catalonia.
Carl-Henrik Bjerström, Josep Renau and the Politics of Culture in Republican
Spain, 1931–1939: Re-imagining the Nation.
Kathryn Crameri,‘Goodbye, Spain?’: The Question of Independence for Catalonia.
Mark Derby, Petals and Bullets: Dorothy Morris – A New Zealand Nurse in the
Spanish Civil War.
Francisco Espinosa-Maestre, Shoot the Messenger?: Spanish Democracy and the
Crimes of Francoism – From the Pact of Silence to the Trial of Baltasar Garzón.
María Jesús González,Raymond Carr: The Curiosity of the Fox.
Helen Graham,The War and its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long
Twentieth Century.
Angela Jackson, ‘For us it was Heaven’: The Passion, Grief and Fortitude of
Patience Darton – From the Spanish Civil War to Mao’s China.
Gabriel Jackson, Juan Negrín: Physiologist, Socialist, and Spanish Republican
War Leader.
Xavier Moreno Juliá,The Blue Division: Spanish Blood in Russia, 1941–1945.
David Lethbridge, Norman Bethune in Spain: Commitment, Crisis, and
Conspiracy.
anderson - xx - 5 25/03/2016 10:43 Page iii
Antonio Miguez Macho, The Genocidal Genealogy of Francoism: Violence,
Memory and Impunity
Carles Manera, The Great Recession: A Subversive View.
Nicholas Manganas,Las dos Españas: Terror and Crisis in Contemporary Spain.
Jorge Marco, Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities and Cultures of
Antifascist Resistance in Spain.
Martin Minchom, Spain’s Martyred Cities: From the Battle of Madrid to
Picasso’s Guernica.
Olivia Muñoz-Rojas, Ashes and Granite: Destruction and Reconstruction in the
Spanish Civil War and Its Aftermath.
Linda Palfreeman, Spain Bleeds: The Development of Battlefield Blood
Transfusion during the Civil War.
Isabelle Rohr, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898–1945: Antisemitism and
Opportunism.
Gareth Stockey, Gibraltar: “A Dagger in the Spine of Spain?”
Maria Thomas, The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and
Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931–1936.
Dacia Viejo-Rose, Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after
Civil War.
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For Matilde Ruiz and José Luis Obispo
anderson - xx - 5 25/03/2016 10:43 Page v
Friend or Foe?
Occupation, Collaboration
and Selective Violence
in the Spanish Civil War
PETER ANDERSON
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Copyright © Peter Anderson 2016.
Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2016.
SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS
PO Box 139
Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK
and simultaneously in the United States of America and Canada
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in collaboration with the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary
Spanish Studies, London.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Anderson, Peter, 1964 March 22—author.
Title: Friend or foe? : occupation, collaboration and selective violence in
the Spanish Civil War / Peter Anderson.
Description: Chicago : Sussex Academic Press, 2016. | Series: The Cañada
Blanch / Sussex academic studies on contemporary Spain | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015051159| ISBN 9781845197940 (hb : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781782843269 (mobi) | ISBN 9781782843276 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939—Social aspects. |
Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939—Collaborationists. |
Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939—Campaigns. | Political
persecution—Spain—History—20th century. | Political
violence—Spain—History—20th century. | Franco, Francisco,
1892–1975—Influence. | Francoism—History.
Classification: LCC DP269.8.S65 .A53 2016 | DDC 946.081—dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015051159
E-Pub ISBN 978-1-78284-325-2
This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including
tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to
electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.
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Contents
The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies viii
Series Editor’s Preface x
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: From the Bullet to the Dossier 1
Part One The Collapse of Security: Málaga
1 The Collapse of Security 25
2 Looking for Friends: Occupation and the Construction 44
of the State
3 Classification and the Construction of Civil Society 58
Part Two Enemies Made by War: Bilbao
4 Foes Forged by War 81
5 Selective Violence: The Classification of Prisoners of War 99
6 Exchange and Commutation 116
7 Priests as Enemies of God and the Fatherland 131
Part Three The Logic of Violence: Barcelona
8 Revolution, Violence, Humiliation and Moral Outrage 151
9 The Search for Fine-Grained Information 168
10 Defining the Enemy 182
Conclusion: Civil War and Classification 200
Notes 205
Bibliography 243
Index 257
vii
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The Cañada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies
In the 1960s, the most important initiative in the cultural and academic
relations between Spain and the United Kingdom was launched by a
Valencian fruit importer in London. The creation by Vicente Cañada Blanch
of the Anglo-Spanish Cultural Foundation has subsequently benefited large
numbers of Spanish and British scholars at various levels. Thanks to the
generosity of Vicente Cañada Blanch, thousands of Spanish schoolchildren
have been educated at the secondary school in West London that bears his
name. At the same time, many British and Spanish university students have
b enefited from the exchange scholarships which fostered cultural and scien-
tific exchanges between the two countries. Some of the most important
historical, artistic and literary work on Spanish topics to be produced in
Great Britain was initially made possible by Cañada Blanch scholarships.
Vicente Cañada Blanch was, by inclination, a conservative. When his
Foundation was created, the Franco regime was still in the plenitude of its
power. Nevertheless, the keynote of the Foundation’s activities was always
a complete open-mindedness on political issues. This was reflected in the
diversity of research projects supported by the Foundation, many of which,
in Francoist Spain, would have been regarded as subversive. When the
Dictator died, Don Vicente was in his seventy-fifth year. In the two decades
following the death of the Dictator, although apparently indestructible,
Don Vicente was obliged to husband his energies. Increasingly, the work
of the Foundation was carried forward by Miguel Dols whose tireless and
imaginative work in London was matched in Spain by that of José María
Coll Comín. They were united in the Foundation’s spirit of open-minded
commitment to fostering research of high quality in pursuit of better
Anglo-Spanish cultural relations. Throughout the 1990s, thanks to them,
the role of the Foundation grew considerably.
In 1994, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, the
Foundation established the Príncipe de Asturias Chair of Contemporary
Spanish History and the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish
Studies. It is the particular task of the Cañada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies to promote the understanding of twentieth-
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The Cañada Blanch Centre ix
century Spain through research and teaching of contemporary Spanish
history, politics, economy, sociology and culture. The Centre possesses a
valuable library and archival centre for specialists in contemporary Spain.
This work is carried on through the publications of the doctoral and post-
doctoral researchers at the Centre itself and through the many seminars and
lectures held at the London School of Economics. While the seminars are
the province of the researchers, the lecture cycles have been the forum in
which Spanish politicians have been able to address audiences in the United
Kingdom.
Since 1998, the Cañada Blanch Centre has published a substantial
number of books in collaboration with several different publishers on the
subject of contemporary Spanish history and politics. An extremely fruitful
partnership with Sussex Academic Press began in 2004. Full details and
descriptions of the published works can be found on the Press website. Many
of the titles deal with the Spanish Civil War. Along with the history of
medicine during the war and the role of the International Brigades, an area
covered frequently by the series has been violence behind the lines during
the war and the post-war Francoist repression.
In 2012, there appeared Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Groundby
Richard Barker, a painstaking reconstruction of the terror visited upon an
Andalusian village in the wake of the military coup of 1936 using the tech-
niques of anthropology, sociology and oral history. Then, in 2013, two
complementary works were published. The exhaustive research into anti-
clerical violence in the Republican zone by Maria Thomas was accompanied
by a remarkably original work by Francisco Espinosa-Maestre. In Shoot the
Messenger, he examined twelve cases in which investigation of atrocities
committed during and after the war were blocked by various legal
subterfuges and threats. It went a very long way to explaining the main-
tenance of silence about the crimes of Franco. That subject was at the heart
of The Genocidal Genealogy of Francoism: Violence, Memory and Impunity
published by Antonio Míguez Macho in 2015 which explained and indicted
both the failure the Spanish judiciary to investigate the crimes of the Franco
regime and its denial that they ever took place.
The series’ examination of Francoist repressive policy is taken much
further by Peter Anderson’s highly original study Friend or Foe? Occupation,
Collaboration and Selective Violence in the Spanish Civil War. He moves on from
the analysis of Francoist terror to cast light on a hitherto little-understood
dimension of the repression. On the basis of substantial archival research,
this highly original study illuminates the regime’s efforts to control the
population through a massive system of individual classification.