Moscow Gold - Paris Gold

Paris Gold

With the beginning of the Civil War, the Nationalists began to organize their own government machinery, considering those institutions that remained under the control of the Republican government in Madrid as illegitimate and illegal. As such, a parallel central bank, head-quartered in Burgos, was formed. Both Republican and Nationalist banks claimed to be the legitimate Bank of Spain, both domestically and internationally. The central headquarters of the Bank of Spain in Madrid, and thus its gold reserves, as well as its most important provincial delegations, were kept under the control of the Republican government, while the Nationalists gained control of the provincial delegations within their territory, including Burgos.

On July 26, the newly-formed Government of Prime Minister José Giral announced the sending of part of the gold reserves to France. Nationalist authorities, informed by their contacts in France and in Republican territory of the Republican government's intentions, affirmed that such usage of the gold was in violation of the aforementioned Cambó Law, and therefore considered such actions illegal. Nationalist authorities emitted a decree on August 25 declaring the credit operations of the Republican government null and void:

Decree number 164:
The present Junta, in the interests of moral order, underlines, once again, the scandal that the exit of the gold from the Bank of Spain has caused in the universal conscience, decreed by the badly-called Government of Madrid. But the issue principally to point out is the consequences of this operation in judicial terms, as they have been undertaken openly in violation of the fundamental precepts of the currently in force Ley de Ordenación Bancaria, it is evident that they lead by their manifest illegality of the inexcusable conclusion of their nullity, which is to reach in its civil effects as many persons, national or foreign, that have participated in them, with independence to their criminal responsibility, already regulated in a separate Decree. And it is logically complementary that this declaration, the prevention of the damages that may be caused, with measures of caution, which are to be adopted with urgency as is demanded by the defence of the national interests.
In its virtue, as President of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, and in accordance with it, I come to decree the following:
Article the first. All operations financed with the guarantee of the gold extracted from the Bank of Spain, from the 18th of last July, are declared to be null, and further on any and all actions that correspond by Right will be undertaken for the rescue of the aforementioned gold, regardless of the location where it may be found.
Article the second. Without prejudice to the criminal responsibility defined in the Decree number 36, the values, credits, rights and goods of all kinds that national or foreign persons or entities possess in Spain that have intervened or will intervene directly or indirectly in the operations mentioned in the preceding article, will be immediately retained, in order to assure the responsibilities of any kind that may be derived from such actions.
Burgos, 25th of August 1936.

Miguel Cabanellas, President of the Junta de Defensa Nacional

Vincent Auriol, French Minister of Finance, and Émile Labeyrie, Governor of the Bank of France, agreed to allow these operations to continue, both because of their antifascist convictions and to strengthen France's own gold reserves and promote the stability of the French franc. The creation of the Non-Intervention Committee did not obstruct the sending of gold to France, and the government of Prime Minister Largo Caballero, formed in September of the same year, continued the former Government's policy. French and British governments disregarded the complaints of Nationalist authorities about the allegedly unlawful use of the gold.

By March 1937, 174 tonnes of fine gold (193 tonnes of crude gold) had been sent to the Bank of France, an amount equivalent to 27.4% of the total Spanish reserves. In exchange, the Republican Ministry of Finance received 3,922 million francs (approximately US$196 million), which were used to purchase military materials and provisions. It is known that additional gold, silver and jewellery were smuggled into French territory. These transactions were justified by the Republican government on August 30, in view of the gravity of the situation following the military insurrection, in order to "be able to respond in the extent and intensity necessary to crush the despicable rebellion".

During the last year of the Civil War, 40.2 tonnes of gold deposited in Mont de Marsan were judicially retained, and finally handed over to the Francoist government at the conclusion of the war. This became the only successful claim on the Bank of Spain's gold reserves.