CNT’s National Committee before finding the CNT headquarters set up in Paris. What they learned and their subsequent reports would play a significant part in the anarchists’ participation in the Casado coup. Throughout the delegation’s sojourn in France, Val’s main contribution had been to mutter imprecations against Negrín.12
On 8 February, they took part in a meeting in Paris with senior members of the CNT, including Juan García Oliver, the head of the National Committee Mariano Vázquez and the minister Segundo Blanco. García Oliver said that it was necessary to remove Negrín and form a government to bring the war to an end. Val then shocked the group by declaring that he had proof that Negrín was not planning resistance but meant to end the war. He then persuaded them that it was not the moment to think in terms of surrendering. His optimistic view of the possibilities of lengthy resistance did not prevail. However, since the main objection to Negrín was, bizarrely, that he was defeatist, the group finally agreed that it was necessary to remove him and form a government capable of resisting long enough to achieve an acceptable peace settlement. The general consensus was that ‘the more resistance we are capable of mounting, the better the peace conditions we can secure’. Ignoring the military reality, Mariano Vázquez declared simplistically, ‘Whoever can strike hard is in a position to make themselves feared.’ They then had immense problems getting back to the centre-south zone, which they finally managed to do in the early hours of the morning of Monday 20 February.13
Underlying the anarchist initiatives was both a visceral anti-communism and a belief that Negrín was incapable of continuing the war effort. In fact, Negrín harboured vain hopes that, after the collapse of the Catalan front, it would be possible to secure the return to Spain both of the evacuated army and of the equipment that they had taken over the border. He had also believed that the supplies from friendly nations, especially the Soviet Union, that had accumulated in France could be delivered to the central-southern zone. Given his commitment to holding out until a peace settlement could be made that would secure the evacuation of those at risk, these hopes sustained his rhetorical commitment to the possibility of continuing the war. While the anarchists simply did not want to believe him, his rhetoric also exposed him to the criticism of many, most notably Azaña and Rojo.14
Just before the fall of Catalonia, the internationally famous journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt,
I find myself thinking about Negrín all the time. I suppose he will fly to Madrid when it is ended in Catalonia and carry on there. Negrín is a really great man, I believe (and he can’t stop being now), and it’s so strange and moving to think of that man who surely never wanted to be prime minister of anything being pushed by events and history into a position which he has heroically filled, doing better all the time, all the time being finer against greater odds. He used to be a brilliant gay lazy man with strong beliefs and perhaps too much sense of humour. He was it seems never afraid and loved his friends and his ideas about Spain and drinking and eating and just being alive. Now he has grown all the time until you get an impression he’s made of some special indestructible kind of stone: he has a twenty hour working day and in Spain you get the idea that he manages alone, that with his two hands every mornng he puts every single thing into place and brings order. Of course, he cannot hold a front. I hope he gets to Madrid. If they are going to be defeated, I still hope they don’t surrender.15
In contrast, some months after the end of the war, Rojo produced a devastating criticism of Negrín:
It would appear that the view that we should continue a policy of resistance was imposed in the hope that it might provoke a change in the international situation. The same hope that had sustained our sacrifices but now without any basis. What do sacrifices matter! Resistance! A sublime formula for heroism when it is nurtured by hope and sustained by an ideal; but when the will that flies the banner of that ideal collapses and hope becomes a denial of reality, then resistance is no longer an heroic military battle-cry but an absurdity. What were we to resist with? Why were we going to resist? Two questions for which no one had a positive answer.
Rojo’s diatribe reflected the distress caused him by the plight of the exiles, but, safe in France, he failed to take into consideration the appalling consequences of a swift unconditional surrender. He followed up his comments on the futility of continued resistance with a disturbing rhetorical question:
Should I have embarked on an undertaking proposed in such a confusing manner? If it was true that the war in the central zone was going to be continued seriously, why were the stocks of food, raw materials and armaments accumulated in France sold off? This was too obvious and significant not to be disconcerting: on the one hand, the conflict was being wound up economically by the sale of these stocks; on the other hand the order to resist was given without the means to carry it out, even in terms of food. It was clear to me that I should not take part in or support from my technical post what was an incomprehensible action.16
It was certainly the case that Francisco Méndez Aspe had been ordered to shore up the Republic’s financial resources by selling material that was either in France or had been ordered but not yet delivered. This was part of Negrín’s plans to pay for the exiles in France and for the evacuation of Republicans. Clearly, it would have been difficult to do both that and mount a full-scale resistance. Effectively, Negrín seems to have been concentrating on the former while maintaining the fiction of resistance both to gain time and in the hope of securing concessions from Franco.17
Only with the greatest reluctance had Azaña agreed to take up residence in the Spanish Embassy in Paris, preferring to be further from the influence of Negrín’s Ambassador in France, Marcelino Pascua. He had arrived on 9 February and wasted little time in publicly expressing his support for British and French proposals for mediation, which effectively meant early surrender. His presence in France and its implication that there was no proper government in Spain were necessarily damaging to Negrín’s efforts to secure guarantees from Franco. As Negrín later repeated to Marcelino Pascua, he had expected Azaña to return to Spain once the members of the government were back in Madrid. To this end, after the first cabinet meeting on 13 February, the Foreign Minister Julio Álvarez del Vayo sent a telegram to Pascua instructing him to inform Azaña that the government required his presence in Spain. Azaña did not reply and, the next day, Álvarez del Vayo arrived in Paris to underline personally the urgency of the President’s return. Azaña merely listened and said that he would inform Negrín of his views. This he did the following day, disingenuously asking Negrín to give reasons why there should be any change to what had been agreed before he left Spain.18 Negrín was taken aback by Azaña’s continued prevarication and claimed that, at their meeting on 30 January in the presence of Martínez Barrio, it had been agreed that he would reside in Paris only until the cabinet needed him. In fact, at that meeting, the issue had not been resolved. Although Azaña had insisted that he would not return, Negrín had been confident that the overwhelming needs of the Republic would oblige him to relent. Negrín now reiterated the obvious reasons why the President’s absence was undermining the work of the government. Despite frequent prompts from Pascua, Azaña did not reply to Negrín’s message. He did, however, ask for financial help and was given 150,000 francs (the equivalent today of US$85,000 ).19
The situation faced by the refugees was appalling. Within days of Negrín leaving, the Consul in Perpignan, Antonio Zorita, was replaced. He had shown virtually no readiness to help the refugees. Indeed, his wife had tried to prevent Colonel Tagüeña and other senior military personnel from staying in the Consulate on the grounds that they upset the routine of the household. Both Tagüeña and Rafael Méndez were helped immensely by the feminist Margarita Nelken, who acted as Méndez’s liaison with the French authorities and gave Tagüeña and his comrades French currency with which to buy food. Álvarez del Vayo told Méndez that Negrín wanted him to replace Zorita as Consul.20 Many prominent officers,