Franco kept himself well informed of developments within these two parties. He was not unduly worried, because the nationalist alliance required a single commander and he had no effective rival, either within the army or outside. The main Carlist leader, Fal Conde, was exiled in Portugal and the Count of Rodezno, who remained, was far more amenable. The continued suppression of any announcement of the execution of José Antonio Primo de Rivera at Alicante encouraged wishful rumours among the Falange that he was still alive. This prevented the appointment of a permanent replacement. The German ambassador, Faupel, repeated in a report to the Wilhelmstrasse the astute remark of an Italian attaché: ‘Franco is a leader without a party, the Falange a party without a leader.’1
In addition, the Falange was still weakened by the potential split which came from the inherent contradiction in José Antonio’s philosophy: socialist aspirations had been swamped by reactionary nationalism. José Antonio could be quoted by the proletarian ‘old shirts’, led by the provincial chief, Manuel Hedilla, to show that the ‘socialist’ aspect of their movement was fundamental. At the same time the reactionary wing, which was growing more powerful than the ‘old shirts’, could point to other statements to show that recreating ‘traditional Spain’ was uppermost in the mind of José Antonio.
It was the latter group, the modern reactionaries, who contacted the Carlists during the winter of 1936–7 for secret talks about an alliance, while the proletarian elements, led by Hedilla, opposed such a move. Sancho Dávila, a cousin of José Antonio, had been in touch with Fal Conde since before the rising and proposed a union of the two parties. Franco heard privately of these discussions, which took place in Lisbon on 16 February, and although they came to nothing, he saw that trouble was more likely to come from Falangist ranks than from the Carlists, who were disciplined fighters uninterested in political intrigue.
Hedilla had been the Falangist chief in Santander and he was lucky to have been in Corunna when the rising began in the north, for his home town was held for the Republic. In Corunna he played an important role, both in bringing the well-armed Falange to help the rebels secure the town and in conducting the subsequent repression, which was among the worst in Spain. Yet this former mechanic soon became the most outspoken critic of indiscriminate nationalist killing on the grounds that it alienated the proletariat from their cause. On Christmas Eve 1936 he told the Falange not to persecute the poor simply for having voted for the left ‘out of hunger or despair. We all know that in many towns there were–and are–right-wingers who are worse than the reds.’
Such statements made Hedilla and the left-wing Falangists highly suspect in the eyes of the Spanish right. Many senior army officers–only Yagüe was a committed left Falangist–saw them as little better than ‘reds’. A count in Salamanca even declared indignantly to Virginia Cowles that ‘half the fascists were nothing but reds’, and that in the north ‘many of them were giving the Popular Front salute and talking about their brothers in Barcelona’.2 On the other hand, the
During the winter of 1936, the German ambassador, had started to cultivate the admiration which the ‘old shirts’ held for the Nazis. It seems that Faupel was trying to curry favour at home, not acting on orders. He encouraged Hedilla to resist the middle-class takeover of the Falange and advised Franco that the nationalists could win the war only if they introduced social reform. Nevertheless, he wrote to the Wilhelmstrasse that if a clash occurred between Franco and the Falange ‘we are in agreement with the Italians that despite our sympathy for the Falange and its healthy tendencies, we must support Franco at all costs’. Franco tolerated his allies’ interference in military affairs because he had no choice, but he would not brook their involvement in the political future of Spain. He demanded von Faupel’s replacement, even though he had not been involved in any attempt to change the nationalist leadership.
