himself. Not entirely convinced, Casado replied on 1 February, ‘Understood, agreed and the sooner it is broadcast the better.’ He demanded a further guarantee in the form of a letter from his friend Fernando Barrón y Ortiz, one of Franco’s most trusted generals. Casado also told Medina that it was his fervent hope ‘to end the war with a magnificent deed that would astound the world, without the loss of a single life or the firing of a single bullet’. The requested letter from Barrón would eventually reach Casado on 15 February.19
Unaware of the extent of Casado’s contacts with Burgos, on 2 February, encouraged by the clandestine organization of the Falange, Besteiro had again used his acquaintance with Ángel Pedrero to request an urgent interview with Casado. When they met at Besteiro’s house, Casado told him about his by now much more advanced plans for peace which were moving towards the idea of a coup d’état. According to reports received in Burgos from the Fifth Column, the two remained in close contact throughout February.20
An inadvertent but crucial step towards the Casado coup had been Negrín’s declaration of martial law on 23 January 1939 as Franco’s forces approached Barcelona. No previous Republican government had wished to take this step both because it would put an end to democratic liberties and because of lingering suspicion of military loyalties.21 It was a desperate, perhaps inevitable and certainly fatal initiative, aimed at forcibly uniting all forces within the centre-south zone under military authority. The decree handed power to the military – and specifically to General Miaja, chief of the centre-south army group, and to General Matallana, chief of his general staff, both of whom hoped for an early end to the war. It downgraded the authority of civil governors, handing their authority over censorship and the holding of public meetings to the military governors in each province.
According to Vicente Uribe, ‘the majority of [the military governors] were real fossils who had demonstrated their inability to command and to make war. The upshot was that a measure introduced to strengthen the fight against the enemy and reinforce discipline among civilians was used by these fossils against the Communists in particular, by putting obstacles in the way of our activities and our work.’22 It thus facilitated Casado’s conspiracy. There were many other features of the situation which encouraged Casado. After the fall of Barcelona, the Republic’s senior authorities had joined the exodus to the French frontier. Neither President Azaña nor General Vicente Rojo, chief of staff and effectively commander-in-chief of the Republican armed forces, returned to Spanish territory. Indeed, after the fall of Barcelona, the Communists had noted a change in the attitude of General Rojo. In a manuscript written as a contribution to the official Communist Party history of the war, Vicente Uribe asserted: ‘in the last days of the campaign in Catalonia, he no longer showed any confidence in the cause of the Republic nor any desire to continue the fight’.23 Negrín, on the other hand, would do both.
In the wake of the Francoist promises, Casado had lunch in Valencia with Generals Matallana, Miaja and Leopoldo Menéndez (commander of the Army of the Levante). The exact date is not known but it was probably on 2 or 3 February, certainly before Negrín returned from France. Nor is it known if it was before or after Casado’s meeting with Besteiro. In his later account, Casado claimed that he and the three generals had agreed that, in the event of Negrín returning to the central zone, they would create a National Defence Junta (Consejo Nacional de Defensa) to overthrow the Prime Minister. ‘The three generals, without argument, regarded themselves as committed to this course of action, with all its consequences.’ However, Miaja’s secretary, his nephew Lieutenant Fernando Rodríguez Miaja, who was present at the lunch at his uncle’s residence, gives a very different account. The four main protagonists were accompanied by their adjutants and there were twelve people around the table.
What became obvious during the meal was Colonel Casado’s profound discontent with Dr Negrín, against whom he let loose a stream of insults. He ate nothing and drank only milk because the gastric ulcer which exacerbated his evil temper, already bitter and disagreeable by nature, had worsened in recent weeks. Obviously, in front of that audience, even though it was quite small, he did not reveal any intention of organizing a coup against the government … The other guests also expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the war was being run but not in the extremely violent terms used by Casado.24
In Negrín’s continued absence at the French–Catalan border, Casado was increasingly indiscreet about his determination to bring an end to the war. This was revealed at a meeting held in the afternoon and evening of either 7 or 8 February at Los Llanos in Albacete, the headquarters of the air force in the centre-south zone. The property of the Marqués de Larios, Los Llanos was a country house previously used as a hunting lodge but converted into a hospital for wounded airmen. The estate surrounding the house was used as an aerodrome.25 The proceedings of this gathering can be reconstructed thanks to a memoir by José Manuel Vidal Zapater, at the time a young airman who was charged with taking the minutes. The meeting was convened by Jesús Hernández in his capacity as commissar general of the Group of Armies of the Centre and was an attempt to get the top brass in the central zone to commit to continued resistance. Among the approximately ten senior officers present were Casado, Matallana, Miaja, Colonels Domingo Moriones Larraga and Antonio Escobar Huertas (respectively commanders of the armies of Andalusia and of Extremadura), Colonel Antonio Camacho Benítez, commander of the air force in the centre-south zone, and the commander of the fleet, Admiral Buiza.
With the Army of Catalonia in the process of crossing into France, Hernández was effectively the senior civilian authority in the army (after Negrín as Minister of Defence and Prime Minister). The officers present (mainly career officers whose service pre-dated 1936) intensely resented commissars in general and Hernández in particular. The first item of business was the launch by Hernández of a dramatic manifesto to the nation, calling for last-ditch resistance and the mobilization of the remaining drafts of conscripts. His presentation was repeatedly and rudely interrupted by Casado, whose hostile reaction effectively revealed what he was up to. Rather more politely, the other officers present supported Casado’s remarks about the impossibility of continuing the war. Buiza stressed the precarious situation of the Republican navy and Colonel Camacho spoke in deeply pessimistic terms of the massive superiority of the Francoist air force, with nearly 1,500 aircraft opposed to the Republic’s barely 100 usable machines. The only officer who did not oppose Hernández was Miaja who, after a heavy lunch, gave the impression of being asleep. He woke once, pointing at Vidal Zapater and asking Matallana who he was. When Matallana replied that he was a stenographer, Miaja, being rather deaf, asked again, and Matallana shouted, ‘A stenographer!’ Miaja then returned to his siesta. Vidal Zapater suspected that this was a pantomime on Miaja’s part to save him from having to take sides openly. In contrast, Casado’s recklessness may well have been part of his efforts to secure allies within the high command.26
That Casado should have proceeded with his anti-Negrín plans after the ratification a few days later, on 9 February, of Franco’s Law of Political Responsibilities was a measure of the vehement anti-communism that he shared with the Caudillo. Retroactive to October 1934 and published on 13 February, the law aimed to ‘punish the guilt of those who contributed by acts or omissions to foment red subversion, to keep it alive for more than two years and thereby undermine the providential and historically inevitable triumph of the National Movement’. The law deemed all Republicans to be guilty of the crime of military rebellion.27 The arrogance and egoism that underlay Casado’s actions persuaded him that the law could not possibly be applied to him. Even before he got the requested letter from Barrón, on 10 February, Colonel Ungría had received a message from one of his agents which read: ‘Casado in agreement with Besteiro, he requests that the lives of decent officers be respected.’ This extremely limited, not to say selfish, request suggests that Casado and his closest collaborators believed that some sort of esprit de corps united professional officers on both sides of the lines