Authors: Norman Lewis
In the main thoroughfares round the Puerta del Sol, well-dressed youths had brought out a municipal dust-van and were clearing up the rubbish. They were attacking the work with a great show of animal spirit, taking a special delight in showering the refuse over each other’s neatly creased trousers and scintillating shoes. The yells of joy when one of them tripped on the edge of the van and fell into the muck nearly started an alarm.
More trams were running and the confusion had correspondingly increased. Casting an eye round the Puerta del Sol it was not uncommon to see two or three stranded trams which had somehow or other got on to the wrong line or had been derailed. These would be surrounded by a perplexed group of soldiers and a large crowd of discreetly jeering citizens. This factor, combined with the evidence of the bullet-shattered glass and woodwork, suggested that tram riding had become more a matter of high adventure than convenience.
In the cafés, stories were circulating of the night’s slaughters. Apart from café-visiting there was very little we dared do. It was unsafe to get out of sight of the Puerta del Sol. Above all we were anxious not to get cut off from our retreat by a machine-gun battle. So most of our time in those early days in Madrid was spent in cafés.
The first place we visited was of the variety where you paid nine pence for a cup of coffee; the charge being based on three pence for materials and sixpenny worth of atmosphere. It was frequented by substantial businessmen, one of whom was describing to his cronies at the neighbouring table adversities he had suffered the night before. He was impressed by the bitter irony of having been hounded through the streets by the police who were paid to protect his interests.
He described his experience in a billiard room over a fashionable café when the firing had started, and the police (so he said, although it sounded improbable) had mistaken the tapping of cues for some sort of muffled firearm. Anyway, to promote a submissive attitude they had thrown a hand grenade through a window and then charged in. The businessmen, probably gouty, undoubtedly short-winded, had been driven down the stairs and out into the street, while the police fired pot-shots at them from the café windows. The narrator had then made for home, a journey which, having been made for the greater part of the distance on his hands and knees, had taken him several hours to complete.
When we finally managed to buy a paper, it made small reference to recent events. The death was reported of a woman who had been shot through the heart when she had opened her bedroom window to see what was going on. Names were published of a few civilians who had been mown down in the street. Most of the space was devoted to commendations of the soldiers and police, and accounts of how by their unflagging bravery, devotion and loyalty in the hour of national need, normality was now restored.
Having no faith in the propagandist conception of normality, we began to edge, early in the afternoon, in the direction of the hotel. It was 3.30 p.m. The Puerta del Sol was as thickly populated as ever, but today a neurotic jumpiness was noticeable in the crowd. As usual we stopped at the Levante for a drink, finding that so far it had come off comparatively unscathed. It was a splendid place in which to relax and we hoped that the proprietor of this excellent café had managed to remain on good terms with the police.
We had been looking forward to another hour’s liberty before taking cover for the night, but no sooner had we given our order than we noted that the Puerta del Sol was already emptying. Two men ran past. We decided to bank on intuition and got up to go. Our uneasiness seemed contagious. Almost as one man the patrons of the Levante drained their glasses. With a perfectly synchronised scuffle, chairs were pushed back. A dozen voices bellowed for the bill and at least as many, remaining silent, decided to settle up on a more propitious occasion.
Just as we pushed through the doors the expected shot rang out: that now unpleasantly familiar sound, the harbinger of panic at whose signal the general stampede would commence. With the faultless unanimity of a well-ordered puppet show, all hands went up. The Assault Guards clenched their teeth and raised their rifles. In ten seconds the Puerta del Sol was a desert. The inevitable diminutive soldier with the large automatic herded us into a bar on the street corner. The bar was open on two sides. It would have taken about ten minutes to get the complicated shutters down. The barman, deciding that even to make the attempt would be unprofitable, contented himself by whisking down out of harm’s way the more expensive bottles of drink.
Almost as soon as we got back to the hotel there was a rapping on the door. Two detectives stood outside. Keeping their right hands significantly in their pockets, they used the left to uncover, with a gesture last seen in Wild West movies, their stars of authority. With many apologies they examined our passports, searched our baggage and looked under the bed for hidden ammunition. What was worrying them was the presence in a cheap working-class hotel of two men who carried masculine fashion to the extent of a collar and tie. We assured them we represented the English equivalent of their own proletarians, but that owing to the successes in our country of the capitalist social order our standard of living had been raised. Consequently we were in a position to ape the fashions of our betters. They were impressed, and wished that they could honestly say the same about Spain. But as we could see for ourselves there existed at the moment a regrettable lack of unanimity of opinion regarding the benefits conferred by capitalism.
With nightfall, a searchlight that had been mounted on the highest building in Madrid—the Capitol Cinema—came into play. It swept the roofs with a double shaft of light that looked almost solid in the dark sky. In view of the non-appearance on the streets of any organised socialist forces, the Government had decided to declare war on the snipers.
Seen from a suitable eminence, the most essential characteristic of Madrid is the flatness of its roofs. Layer upon layer of roofs rise one behind the other, their continuity broken by innumerable attic windows and odd additional storeys; creepers, which in season bear red and purple flowers, twine about them. The sea of tiles, toned by the sun and mellowed by grime to a charming compromise between black and yellow, with faded touches of gold, is an altogether Spanish and most attractive sight. This characteristic roof is known as the
azotea.
It has played a considerable part in determining the character of warfare on Spanish soil.
The
azotea
is the answer to a sniper’s dream. The facilities it offers for well-sustained guerrilla warfare coupled with centuries of practice have produced a special technique of attack. It was estimated, according to one of the papers, that ten thousand snipers were operating from the
azoteas
during the first few nights of the revolt. Granted that in the majority of cases these snipers were boys armed with cheap Belgian revolvers, the bullets of which were almost harmless by the time they reached the street, they still constituted a nightmare for the military authorities.
The average sniper’s method of procedure involved no great risk. All that was necessary was to clamber to the roof of the house where he lived or lodged, cross over to someone else’s roof, select a nicely-sheltered position overlooking the street where he could see without being seen, and then empty his revolver at the first Assault Guard in sight. After that he could retire while things simmered down. In the days of Napoleon it took the demolition of half the city to clear out ten thousand of these partisans. But nowadays conditions had changed. The police gave orders for all access to the
azoteas
or terraces to be closed. The searchlight bathed the roofs of the city in a blueish white glare in imitation of daylight. The Guards and the soldiers followed its beam with their rifles. In the morning they went round collecting the bodies of those who had still believed in the triumph of the revolution.
O
N FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12,
what had been described in the press as the Battle of Madrid faltered to an end. There was no official statement about the end of hostilities in this small local war, but it was evident that the snipers had left the rooftops, the shopkeepers had removed their window shutters, and most of the Assault Guards were back in their barracks. We saw no displays of relief in what might have been described as a stunned calm following the battle in this extraordinary city. Working-class families in the under-privileged areas of Atocha and Tetuan tasted once more the pleasures of the streets. The sellers of obscene books had set up their stalls again and drew small crowds, slyly turning over the much fingered leaves, although rarely buying.
Vendors of blinded singing birds had set out their three-inch high cages on the pavements, and ‘beggars’—sideshows of human beings with grotesquely distorted heads, bodies or limbs—were put on display in the dark, inner slum courtyards, viewers being supplied with torches for a small payment. By ten in the morning it was estimated that little short of a thousand of the more affluent citizens were once again taking coffee in the top cafés, while symbolically prostrate rows of boot-blacks worked on their shoes.
We spent the afternoon drifting from café to café with our Spanish friends Manuel and Estebán, both of whom were expecting to be arrested and were anxious, on what would probably be their last day of liberty, to savour its joys (the highest expression of which was café visiting) to the very full.
Next morning Estebán disappeared. Manuel decided to leave while the going was good. Later in the day he came to say goodbye to us. There was a great deal of shaking of hands and slapping of shoulders. During the few days we had known Manuel we had become greatly attached to him. He was an affectionate and enthusiastic fellow; a Utopian and a visionary, full of great thoughts and charming fallacies—but like so many of his kind threatened by a premature doom. We later learned that he had been arrested immediately after leaving us.
It had been agreed between us that Eugene would be free to go his own way if he wanted to get more closely involved in the present crisis. A contingent of what by this time had come to be described as the Red Army was moving down on the capital from the North, and was at that moment in the vicinity of Camillas, a small town some fifteen miles to the city’s south. Here it was in the process of enlisting other militant groups in the neighbourhood before what was hoped to be the final attack on Madrid. This was expected to be launched in less than a week’s time. Eugene, of course, was wildly enthusiastic about the possibility of joining this group, and had received the warmest possible encouragement from Manuel and his friends. His only remaining problem was how to get to Camillas. The news was that the many wrecked vehicles until recently blocking the road had been cleared, and that farm-carts were able to get through. Eugene had been assured that we could reach this small town in a day. His further argument was that even should it be impossible to get a lift, we had far exceeded a hike of this length on a single good morning in our walk earlier in the month.
It was settled that I would go with him as far as Camillas, but I made it quite clear that I had no intention of joining in the final attack on the capital itself—nor in any other military adventure undertaken by the so called Red Army. We set out next morning shortly after dawn and it very soon became clear that this was a journey by no means likely to compare in any respect with the uncomplicated stroll to Zaragoza.
There was nothing to eat in any of the cafés in Madrid, so we made for the Levante for a drink of their own creation designed to camouflage the staleness of the accompanying biscuit. A few more trams had appeared and we took one on which a line of evenly spaced bullet holes remained along a bench on which passengers would once have been seated. The latest plague was an invasion by starving, semi-wild dogs, and one had just been destroyed by a guard at the entrance to the Cuatro Caminos station. Here we had hoped for seats on a train to take us at least halfway on our journey to Camillas. We were advised by the stationmaster to return next day when it was hoped that an armed guard would be found to accompany us on the journey. We asked him who would provide the guard—the Gobernación, or the People’s Militia—and he replied that he hadn’t the faintest idea. Then, by the greatest of good luck, he remembered that a hearse would be calling to leave a coffin at the station, and the driver, when it arrived, was happy to give us a lift for a few miles on our way.
Thereafter we were free of the city and on the open road lined with small villages in the process of becoming suburbs. They seemed to us to have retained a certain oriental flavour with the small windows of their houses deeply set in whitewashed walls and their robust chimneys—also whitewashed—projecting from flat roofs. To me it looked like Agadir, in South Morocco—particularly where goats were to be seen tethered on a roof. For me this was Islam.
These people, said our driver, were the owners of a single cow, or even more often a single goat. There was an old law—called by the Spanish a
fuera
(meaning privilege)—by which the peasantry in some village communes were allowed to buy a quarter of a square mile of land from its feudal owner for an exceedingly low price. To qualify for this the peasant had to throw a lead ball, weighing ten kilograms, five metres.
Travelling wizards visited these villages to deal with a variety of sicknesses, most reported as having a sexual origin. Other specialist healers paid regular calls to treat sore feet, eye troubles, and depression in general, and sometimes to save time and expenses the various healers travelled together in bands. Although primitive—as they admitted even to themselves—these communities lived, on the whole, satisfactory lives. All their recent problems were blamed on the present right-wing government which had allowed speculators to double prices, thus compelling these simple country folk to learn what communism was all about. Political agents from Camillas appeared on the scene to tell them that their first step was to fly the red flag on their roofs. This they did and the next day the Assault Guards arrived in an armoured car and shot the roof off wherever a red flag was to be seen.