The ‘Salamanca Papers’: Plunder, Collaboration, Surveillance and Restitution

Abstract

During the course of the Spanish Civil War, Francoists set up special teams to seize documents from organizations which had backed the Popular Front government. In the immediate wake of occupation, these squads would frequently enter towns and cities and appropriate lorry loads of paperwork which they ferried to Salamanca. Nationalist officials trawled through their copious bounty in order to scout out the names of opponents who could be punished for their activities in favour of the Republic. For good reason historians have viewed the Salamanca Papers as a stark example of state directed plunder. By focusing on the role of volunteers in willingly providing information to the authorities, this article seeks to complement the focus on the role of the state. The article also shows that the authorities exploited the information they gleaned to pick out and reward supporters as well as identify and punish enemies. The article further discusses some of the efforts made by Salamanca officials to return documents to Francoists. By examining the Salamanca Papers from these perspectives, the article seeks to throw light upon the close ideological and emotional identification between Francoist state officials and some of their eager supporters.

Notes

^*The Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación supported this article through ‘El proyecto I+D+I, “La Memoria de la Guerra Civil”, las “Culturas de la Victoria” y los apoyos sociales al régimen franquista, 1936–1950’, HAR2009-07487. The research and arguments are the author's alone.

¹ Elmundo.es, 12/06/2005. In October 2007, supporters of the return of the documents drew 12,000 to a meeting in Barcelona (Elmundo.es, 21/10/2007).

²In December 2004 a committee of experts recommended the return of the documents. In April 2005 the Socialist Spanish government announced its decision to transfer the documents. The Spanish state took 500 boxes in the early hours of 19 January 2006 to San Cugat del Vallès where the National Archives of Catalonia are located (ElPais.com, 31/01/2006). In August and December 2008 much smaller numbers of documents were sent from Salamanca (Elmundo.es, 29/11/2010). On 20 July 2011 a further 365 boxes were transferred leaving 25% of the boxes with Catalonian material in Salamanca (ElPais.com, 20/07/2011; Elmundo.es 23/07/2011). Less prominently, on 16 July 2011 fifteen boxes of documents belonging to the Partido Nacionalista Vasco arrived from Salamanca at the Bilbao headquarters of the PNV (ElPais.com, 13/07/2011).

³On the creation by Salamanca officials of card files from the confiscated documents see Josep Cruanyes i Tor, Els papers de Salamanca. L'espoliaciò del patrimony documental de Catalunya (1938–1939) (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2004), 84–85; 239–44. On the role of other Francoist agents such as military court officials collaborating with the Salamanca officials, see Miguel Ángel Jaramillo Guerreira, Inventario de la Auditoria del Ejército de Ocupación (Salamanca: Ministerio de Cultura, 2008), 3.

⁴When it came into effect on 17 November 2005 the law allowed the transfer of the documents to the Catalonian autonomous government, private individuals, corporate bodies and other Spanish autonomous communities (ElPais.com, 13/07/2011 and 03/11/2005).

⁵ Elmundo.es, 13/06/2005; 20minutos.es, 12/06/2005.

⁶The specific debate on the return of the Salamanca Papers first started on 18 January 1978 with a question in the Spanish Senate by Josep Benet (Joaquim Ferrer, Josep M. Figueres and Josep M. Sans i Travé, Els papers de Salamanca: història d'un botí de guerra [Barcelona: Llibres de l’Índex, 1996], 11). Manuel Fraga, one of the founding fathers of the Popular Party, in the Spanish parliament called for the return of the ‘Salamanca Papers’ to Catalonia on 18 March 1980, in the more conciliatory climate of the transition (Ferrer, Figueres and Sans i Travé, Els papers de Salamanca, 14). The PP voted against the 2005 law regulating the return of the documents and argued that this law opened rather than healed wounds (ElPais.com, 03/11/2005).

⁷ Elmundo.es, 12/06/2005.

⁸ ElPais.com, 18/02/2006. When Lanzarote left office in 2011, the street reverted to its original name of Calle Gibraltar.

⁹Cruanyes i Tor, Els papers de Salamanca.

¹⁰Gutmaro Gómez Bravo and Jorge Marco, La obra del miedo. Violencia y sociedad en la España franquista (1936–1950) (Barcelona: Península, 2011), 32, 159–77.

¹¹Comissió de la Dignitat, The Archives Franco Stole from Catalonia. The Campaign for their Return, prologue by Josep Bargalló, preface by Artur Mas (Lleida: Milenio, 2004) [English original]; see Bargalló, ‘Prologue’, 7–8 (p. 7).

¹²Cruanyes i Tor notes the importance of restitution (Els papers de Salamanca, 78, 254–55).

¹³The analysis of social support for the Francoist repression forms an emerging and important focus of study. See, for example, the special edition on social support in Historia Social, 71:3 (2011).

¹⁴Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica (CDMH), Recuperación Secretaría, C. 22, 20. Discurso pronunciado por el Sr Franco el día 18 de julio de 1938.

¹⁵Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica. On the worldwide struggle see also CDMH, Reorganización, 330, Notas informativas sobre la transformación de Recuperación de Documentos, 30-05-1939. On the link between foreign intervention and developing ‘crime’ in the Republic justifying the creation of the archive, see as well CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10.

¹⁶The most up-to-date analysis is in Paul Preston, El holocausto español. Odio y exterminio en la Guerra Civil y después, trad. Catalina Martínez Muñoz y Eugenia Vázquez Nacarino (Barcelona: Debate 2011); Violencia roja y azul. España, 1936–1950, ed. Francisco Espinosa Maestre (Barcelona: Crítica, 2011).

¹⁷Pablo Gil, La noche de los generales. Militares y represión en el régimen de Franco (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2004), 38.

¹⁸Francisco Espinosa Maestre, ‘Primera parte. La represión franquista: un combate por la historia y la memoria’, in Violencia roja y azul, ed. Espinosa Maestre, 17–78, (p. 78).

¹⁹On the Francoist conflation of Jews, Masons, Communists, nudists, vegetarians and pacifists as one political enemy deserving of extermination see Paul Preston, ‘Juan Tusquets: una contribución catalana al mito del contubernio judeo-masónico-bolchevique’, in Soldados de Dios y apóstoles de la patria. Las derechas españolas en la Europa de entreguerras, ed Alejandro Quiroga Fernández de Soto and Miguel del Arco Blanco (Granada: Comares, 2010), 358–71.

²⁰CDMH, Presidencia 115, 4. On the Nazis and Masons, Jews and Communists see Lorna L. Waddington, ‘The Anti-Komintern and Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42:4 (2007), 573–94 (p. 578).

²¹CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 11; Gil, La noche de los generales; and Peter Anderson, The Francoist Military Trials: Terror and Complicity 1939–1945 (London: Routledge/Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 2010).

²²CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 14.

²³CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 1.

²⁴CDMH, Reorganización, 330.

²⁵CDMH, Reorganización, 330, 30-5-1939.

²⁶Waddington, ‘The Anti-Komintern and Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda’, 580–83.

²⁷Matthieu Séguéla, Franco, Pétain. Los secretos de una alianza (Barcelona: Editorial Prensa Ibérica, 1994), 255.

²⁸CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 2 (18-05-1937).

²⁹CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 11.

³⁰CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, Presidencia 115, 5 (16-2-1938).

³¹Julius Ruiz, ‘Fighting the International Conspiracy: The Francoist Persecution of Freemasonry, 1936–1945’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, 12:2 (2011), 179–96 (p. 184).

³²CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10; Cruanyes i Tor, Els papers de Salamanca, 15–16; Gómez Bravo and Marco, La obra del miedo, 162–64.

³³CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 11. Recuperación-Secretaría, 3, 1.5.

³⁴On the role of these in the Francoist repression, see Conxita Mir Curcó, Vivir es sobrevivir. Justicia, orden y marginación en la Cataluña rural de posguerra (Lleida: Milenio, 2000) and Peter Anderson, ‘Singling Out Victims: Denunciation and Collusion in the Post-Civil War Francoist Repression in Spain, 1939–1945’, European History Quarterly, 39:1(2009), 7–26.

³⁵Gil, La noche de los generales, 38.

³⁶Jaramillo Guerreira, Inventario, 3.

³⁷Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice. Repression in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 12.

³⁸CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

³⁹CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁰CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴¹CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴²On the strict treatment meted out to these refugees, often victims of violence in the Republic, see Carlos González Posada, Diario de la revolución y de la guerra, estudio preliminar, transcripción y edición de Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco (Granada: Comares, 2011).

⁴³CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁴CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁵CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁶CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁷CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁴⁸CDMH, Presidencia 115, Manuel Martín Sastre to Laureano Armas, 13-12-1937.

⁴⁹CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 11, Folio 3.

⁵⁰CDMH, Presidencia 115, Manuel Martín Sastre to Laureano Armas, 13-12-1937.

⁵¹CDMH, Presidencia 115, José Parallada to Laureano Armas, 13-12-1937.

⁵²CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁵³CDMH, Presidencia 94, Memoria Sobre el Fichero de Cataluña, 23-2-1938.

⁵⁴CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, C 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias. See also the case of Domingo Díaz Urbano in the same file.

⁵⁵See also Cruanyes i Tor, Els papers de Salamanca, 254–55.

⁵⁶CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 148.

⁵⁷CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 130.

⁵⁸CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 100.

⁵⁹CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2, Correo, Instancias, 106.

⁶⁰CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 113.

⁶¹CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 105. Similar examples in CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22, 10, 1.2 Correo, Instancias, 122.

⁶²CDMH, Recuperación-Secretaría, 22/11.

⁶³CDMH, Recuperación Barcelona, 2401–2600.

⁶⁴ La Vanguardia Española, 26 de abril de 1939, p. 4. Similar examples, 4.4.1939 and 25.3.1939.

⁶⁵CDMH, Recuperación Barcelona, 2413.

⁶⁶CDHM, Recuperación Secretaría, C 22, 10, 1.2, Instancias.

⁶⁷Cruanyes i Tor, Els papers de Salamanca, 348.

⁶⁸Ricard Vinyes, Asalto a la memoria. Impunidades y reconciliaciones, símbolos y éticas (Barcelona: Los Libros de Lince, 2011), 65–68.