In Europe

Franco's conservative supporters fought against communism, but what they were really fighting against was progress. Their German allies, on the other hand, were quite progressive; they wanted above all to try out their new weapons. The Italians joined in for the sake of prestige. And so everyone in Spain fought their own war.
    There were at least three major conflicts going on throughout the Spanish Civil War. There was the war between Franco and the republic. At the same time, there was a revolution going on within the republic, an extremely militant popular anarchist movement that was finally crushed by the communists and the middle classes. And finally, in the background, was the third conflict: between the Old Right and the New Right, between the right that only wanted to defend the old order, and the right that wanted to change and modernise that society by authoritarian, non-democratic means. In other words, between Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
    Franco's coup was intended to be a straightforward revolt that would be over within a few days. But because Franco's grab for power was only partly successful, a long civil war ensued. The generals were unable to secure more than a third of the country. That gave the republicans enough time to mobilise their militias and build an army of their own. In addition, it also gave the smouldering anarchist revolution the chance to flare up and spread across the country. It was in part precisely their own coup that unleashed the ‘leftist chaos’ the generals had been hoping to prevent.
    From his prison cell in Alicante, José Antonio foresaw the disastrous consequences of Franco's demi-coup. There are clear indications that he made a complete about-face in his thinking during the first weeks of the civil war. He wrote letters to the republican government, offered his services as a mediator – members of his family could be held as hostages – and proposed the establishment of a government of ‘national reconciliation’. In other words, he did everything in his power to tether the forces he himself had summoned up.
    The republican government was not oblivious to the opportunity Primo de Rivera was offering. But the situation was simply too chaotic for them to take advantage it. After September, a new and more radical government came to power. Most of the new government ministers were not interested in a compromise. Too much blood had already been spilled for that.
    José Antonio's trial, which finally began on 16 November, was grim. He was accused of ‘mutiny’, which was not far from the truth. He was an experienced lawyer and handled his own defence. Yet the proceedings seemed to sweep right past him, ‘like a man listening intently to the rain’. Only when he heard the death sentence passed against him did he lose his composure. He faced the firing squad, along with four other political prisoners, in the prison yard at Alicante in the early morning of 20 November. All that is left to say about it is this: all five of them stood against the wall with the same fatalistic dignity that thousands of Spaniards, from the left and from the right, showed in the face of death in those years.
    Years later, in the Valle de los Caídos, the ‘Valley of the Fallen’ outside Madrid, I saw the two of them lying together in that grisly Falangist church-cum-charnel house: José Antonio on one side of the altar, Franco on the other. There were three wreaths on Franco's grave, José Antonio had one. They were watched over by thin-lipped angels with faces of stone, their hair pulled back severely, their noses pointed and wings sharp, and between their feet a sword. Visitors came and went, a Mass was held there each morning.
    The grave reveals the character of the one within. The basilica that is their final resting place looks like a Russian subway station, but three times as big and ten times as oppressive, with enough space for 40,000 fallen nationalists. The hacking away of the rock alone claimed fourteen lives. ‘Punitive detachments’ and ‘labour battalions’ of former republicans worked on the basilica for sixteen years. The remains of the barracks that once housed 20,000 convicts are still tucked away in the nearby woods. No room here for reconciliation: the republicans were to remain in their unmarked graves, along the roads and in the fields, rotting in hell.
    The weather that day was appropriate: a thick mist hung over the hills, the cross atop