The British have been connected to Spain for thousands of years. Recent studies have shown that DNA from the Iberian peninsula is common in people from the west of Britain;(1) probable indications of the Phoenicians who came in search of metal ores. Goeffrey Chaucer, the writer of the famous Canterbury Tales was probably in Sevilla on a diplomatic mission for the Black Prince, in the fourteenth century.(2) The army of the Duke of Wellington came through in the early nineteenth century to help get rid of the Napoleonic armies. More recent links have not always been so benign.

On July 11, 1936, a twin engined biplane skipped across the grass at Croydon Aerodrome just east of London, taking off for France. The airplane was a Dragon Rapide; a recent entry into the list of available passenger airplanes used on short range commercial flights. Like all airplanes of its day it was a fragile structure of plywood and fabric.

This was not a scheduled flight, however, but a private charter, paid for by some members of the politically conservative Catholic community in London, fronted by a Luis Bolín, who was the London correspondent of the right wing Spanish newspaper ABC. Although the Rapide was capable of carrying eight passengers, on this part of the flight there were only three passengers, in addition to the pilot and navigator. The only adult passenger was a man named Hugh Pollard. The other two passengers were Pollard’s teen age daughter Diana and a girl friend of hers named Dorothy Watson.

Pollard was a member of Britain’s hunting-shooting elite, but he was also a member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, colloquially known as MI5, and although this trip was a private venture, there is no doubt that the service was aware of the expedition and its intent. Pollard had been involved in various undercover roles including some unsavory activities in Dublin during the War of Irish Independence. The two young girls were a cover, intended to support the improbable story that this was a private vacation trip. Pollard is said to have told his wife that they were going to Oslo. In fact their destination was in entirely the opposite direction.

After the Rapide stopped in France to refuel at Bordeaux, (where Pollard arranged for the navigator to be removed from the plane and sent back to England on the grounds of incompetence) it turned south and left the coast, avoiding Spanish territory and then landed in Portugal. From there it flew due south over the Atlantic on a course for Casablanca. After another refueling stop it turned out over the Atlantic to the Canary Islands, a leg which was at the extreme range of the Rapide. There it picked up another passenger. His name was Francisco Franco, a general in the Spanish Army who had been sent to the Canary Islands because the government in Madrid feared that he was organizing a revolt against that government. Their fears were justified, Franco was indeed involved in a revolt and he wanted to get to the Spanish territories in Africa, and the Rapide soon took off and made for the nearby African coast and to the Spanish army base at Tétuan.

Franco knew that there were officers in the Army of Africa that would support him, in fact they were in on the plot. There were many others who were opposed to the revolt, but these were all arrested and executed in the next few days. By that time Franco had given orders that a relatively small contingent of troops, both from the Spanish Foreign Legion and from the colonial Morrocan troops, should be moved to Sevilla, where one of his allies in the revolt, the falangist General Queipo de Llano had arrested the civilian government and taken over the city.

Franco and his co-conspirators knew that the workers and intellectuals of Sevilla, and the rest of Andalucia, would be strongly opposed to the revolt; Sevilla was a stronghold of the anarchist movement. The tactic he had chosen to meet this opposition was one of exemplary terror; it would be first applied to the working class districts of Sevilla, and then to any community in Spain where there was opposition to the generals’ revolt.

On July 18 1936, a relatively small number of Morrocan troops were flown to Sevilla, landing at the airport which was then located on the west side of the river Guadalquivir. After leaving the aircraft, which had been provided by the German Luftwaffe, they entered the largely Gitano district of Triana. There they went from house to house, pulling the men out into the street, where they killed them with knives. It is currently estimated that eight thousand Sevillanos died in these weeks.

By this time Hugh Pollard and the two young women were on their way back to England, where he no doubt continued with his hobby of killing small animals. Some years later Franco awarded him a decoration for his services.

Some of the British had reason to welcome the Franco victories; the British owned the vast open cast mines at Rio Tinto, north of Sevilla, and Rio Tinto company CEO Sir Auckland Geddes, made it very clear which side the company was on when he told its 1937 annual general meeting in London: “Since the mining region was occupied by General Franco's forces, there have been no further labour problems ... Miners found guilty of troublemaking are court-martialled and shot.” (3).

Some Britons, including those who had recruited Pollard, continued their efforts to aid the Francoist cause from Britain. The man who had introduced Pollard to the planners of the expedition; Douglas Jerrold, a right wing Catholic journalist, claimed that Franco had performed a service to democracy, by frustrating a communist conspiracy to overthrow the Spanish government. In support of this he published a number of documents said to have been found in various communist headquarters. A colleague of his had previously offered these documents to the British Foreign Office, but the office had rejected them as probable forgeries .

Other Britons were strongly opposed to the Franco take over and volunteered to fight with the forces of the Republican government, in the International Brigades. In all some two thousand British volunteers fought with the Republican army; and a quarter of these died in battle.

In Spain the uprising developed into three years of bloody civil war in which a quarter of a million died. Perhaps half of them were arbitrary executions carried out by both sides, but substantially more by the Franquistas, who won the war, but continued their policy of political repression for years after. Even the possession of progressive books was evidence of “Military Rebellion” and made people liable for execution.(4) About a quarter of a million Spaniards became refugees, including many flamenco artists. Some who went to France were later handed over to the Germans, and died in concentration camps. Franco retained power until he died in 1975.

 

(1) Saxons, Vikings and Celts, Brian Sykes, W.W.Norton, 2006

(2) http://www.chaucerandspain.com/CHAUCER%20IN%20SPAIN.htm

(3) http://www.greenleft.org.au/1997/300/15334 While the Rio Tinto mines are no longer worked, the Rio Tinto corporation is now a giant international corporation with many great extraction projects, largely in the underdeveloped world.

(4) http://www.todoslosnombres.org/doc/documentos/documento71.pdf (requires Adobe Reader)