Siege of Madrid - Uprising - Madrid Held For The Republic (July 1936)

Madrid Held For The Republic (July 1936)

The Spanish Civil War began with a failed coup d'état against the Popular Front Government of the Spanish Republic by right-wing Spanish Army officers led by Francisco Franco on 18 July 1936.

In Madrid, the Republican government was unsure of what to do. It wanted to put down the coup, but was unsure if it could trust the armed forces and did not want to arm the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) trade unions and potentially accelerate the ongoing Spanish revolution. On 18 July, the government sent units of the Guardia Civil to Seville to put down the rebellion there. However, on reaching the city the guardias defected to the insurgents. On 19 July Santiago Casares Quiroga resigned as Prime Minister, to be succeeded by Diego Martinez Barrio. He tried to arrange a truce with the insurgent general Emilio Mola by telephone, but Mola refused the offer and Martinez Barrio was ousted as Prime Minister by José Giral. Giral agreed to arm the trade unionists in defence of the Republic, and had 60,000 rifles delivered to the CNT and UGT headquarters, although only 5,000 were in working order. In a radio broadcast on the 18th, the communist leader Dolores Ibarruri coined the famous slogan ¡No pasarán! ("They shall not pass"), urging resistance against the coup. The slogan was to become synonymous with the defence of Madrid and the Republican cause in general.

At the same time, General Joaquín Fanjul, commander of the military garrison based in Montaña barracks in Madrid, was preparing to launch the military rebellion in the city. However, when he tried to march out of the barracks, his 2,500 troops were forced back inside the compound by hostile crowds and armed trade unionists. On the 20th, the barracks was stormed by a mixture of workers and asaltos ("assault guards", an urban police force) loyal to the government (perhaps 10,000 fighters in total). The fighting was chaotic, and on several occasions some soldiers within the barracks indicated their willingness to surrender, only for other troops to keep firing at the attackers, killing those who had broken cover to take them prisoner.

Eventually the barracks fell when the asaltos brought up a 75mm field gun to bombard the complex and its gate was opened by a sapper sergeant sympathetic to the Republican side. The sergeant was killed by one of his officers, but his action allowed the Republicans to breach the walls. A number of soldiers were massacred by the crowd, enraged by the apparent false surrenders, after the fall of the barracks.

Thereafter and for the remainder of the war, Madrid was held by the Republicans. However, its population contained a significant number of right-wing sympathisers. Over 20,000 right-wingers sought refuge in foreign embassies in the city. The weeks that followed the July uprising, saw a number of fascists, or fascist sympathisers (as the left termed them) being killed in Madrid by Republicans. For example, on 23 August 70 prisoners from the Model Prison in the city were massacred in revenge for the Nationalist killing of over 1,500 Republicans after the storming of Badajoz.