Salamanca, May 1937: The Eighth Marquis del Moral and the Turning Point in General Franco’s Foreign Policy Towards Great Britain in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson, eighth Marquis del Moral, is an overlooked figure in the relationship between the British government and the military rebels led by General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Based in London, Moral spearheaded pro-rebel propaganda in Britain and was largely responsible for the formation of the Friends of National Spain. This article places Moral at the centre of its analysis to provide fresh insights into Anglo-Spanish relations during the Civil War. It argues that he played a crucial role in encouraging Franco to reassess his foreign policy towards Britain in the spring of 1937.

Key Words:

• Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson
• Marquis del Moral
• Duke of Alba
• Francisco Franco
• Foreign Policy
• Spanish Civil War
• United Kingdom
• Anglo-Spanish Relations
• Friends of National Spain
• Propaganda

Introduction

Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson, better known as the eighth Marquis del Moral, is a practically unknown figure outside a small body of scholarship on the Spanish Civil War. Even within this literature, the important influence he had on the course of Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations in the late 1930s has received scant attention. For much of the first year of the Civil War, Moral, based in London and leading the propaganda offensive there for the military rebels led by General Francisco Franco, complained frequently about the lack of effort spent in winning over British public and elite political opinion. Despite raising the issue several times during this period with the rebel government and its propaganda department based at Salamanca, Moral’s warnings about British opinion turning against the rebels went unheeded. The destruction of Guernica by rebel aircraft on 26 April 1937, however, prompted Moral to travel to Salamanca himself and confront the obstinate attitudes there in person.

This article hypothesizes that this visit, in May 1937, altered the nature and course of Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations by leading to the appointment of the Duke of Alba as Franco’s diplomatic agent. Alba was well acquainted with British high society, having been educated at Beaumont College in his youth and, in 1923, being one of the founding members and President of the Comité Hispano-Inglés.¹ He had visited Britain at certain points during the early months of the Civil War and met influential persons, such as King George VI in November 1936, although the archival records documenting his activities there prior to June 1937 are sparse.² Accordingly, once he arrived in London in 1937 as Franco’s diplomatic agent, he transformed the informal diplomatic links between the British government and the military rebels into a relationship more reminiscent of a formal bilateral connection: he often enjoyed access to people within the British establishment as if he possessed the diplomatic privileges of an ambassador of a recognized state.

Alba has understandably received much attention from historians in studies of Anglo-Spanish relations but this attention tends to concentrate on the post-June 1937 period. However, while historians have focused on Alba’s time in London, they have given little consideration to the exact reasons as to why Franco appointed him at that particular moment in the Civil War. In an early study of Alba’s diplomatic mission, Rafael Rodríguez-Moñino simply highlighted Alba’s suitability for the role due to his connections to British high society.³ Enrique Moradiellos, in the most detailed study of Anglo-Spanish relations during the Civil War and of Alba’s role, suggests that his appointment was part of a diplomatic offensive which sought to push the British government into according belligerent rights to the military insurgents and thereby bolster their international legitimacy because his presence in London would facilitate communication with the British government. Moreover, like Rodríguez-Moñino, Moradiellos states Alba was the natural choice for this role because he was well-known in Britain and also carried the title Duke of Berwick.⁴ This is certainly true, but this overlooks some important context which can further our understanding of diplomatic relations between Franco and the British government.

To provide this context, this article places the Marquis del Moral at the centre of its analysis and focuses on his activities in London during the first year of the Civil War. Of course, several historians have already explored Moral’s presence in London during this period and offered analyses of his activities. Hugo García has focused on Francoist propaganda in Britain during the Civil War and has rightly highlighted the pivotal role that Moral played on several important occasions such as the founding of the Friends of National Spain and the organization of pro-Franco events around Britain.⁵ In his pioneering study on the impact the destruction of Guernica had on international opinion, Herbert Southworth discussed in great detail the role Moral played in propping up Francoist denials in Britain.⁶ In a later work, Southworth brought attention to Moral’s unsuccessful attempts to convince the British government that the rebellion in Spain had been to forestall a planned communist insurrection.⁷ Enrique Moradiellos’ earlier study of British policy towards the Civil War, which focused primarily on the first half of the conflict, mentions Moral on a few occasions but attaches much less importance to him and provides much less information on his work than did Southworth or García.⁸

Aside from his contacts with the Foreign Office and his propaganda work in London, some historians have also highlighted the potential impact Moral might have had on the conduct of propaganda operations in Salamanca. There has been a tendency to focus on the dismissal on 18 May 1937 of Luis Bolín, Franco’s chief press officer, which coincided with the visit Moral made to Salamanca. García, for example, noted, ‘[a]mong those who exerted pressure on the Generalísimo to dismiss Bolín was without a doubt the Marqués del Moral, who for months had been receiving complaints from British newspapers on the treatment given to their correspondents in the Nationalist zone’.⁹ García’s assumption, as will be shown below, is almost certainly correct, although it is a speculative conclusion based on a report Moral wrote for Alba in July 1937. Paul Preston followed García’s line of thinking and argued that, during his visit to Salamanca, Moral initially failed to convince Franco to make changes to his propaganda efforts surrounding the destruction of Guernica. However, after Moral, accompanied by Arthur Loveday, the British businessman who acted as an advisor to Moral, met with Manuel Arias Paz, head of the Delegación para Prensa y Propaganda since April, and convinced him of Bolín’s inadequacies, the combined pressure of all three on Franco led to Bolín’s dismissal.¹⁰ Southworth similarly attributed Bolín’s dismissal to his failure to stem the international outcry over the Guernica incident and the subsequent pressure from his internal enemies to have him removed.¹¹ Interestingly, none of these historians credited Moral with the appointment of the Duke of Alba as Franco’s diplomatic agent. For García and Southworth, Alba’s appointment simply coincided with the broader changes taking place in the conduct of rebel propaganda. This is perhaps a view conditioned by the content of Bolín’s own memoirs, written several years later, in which there is little mention of Moral and where Bolín himself claimed responsibility for Alba’s appointment.¹²

This article draws primarily on private correspondence between Moral and Alba during the Winter and Spring of 1937. These sources are located at the Palacio de Liria in Madrid and, while historians have tapped into the archival records held there, they seem either not to have given any attention to those upon which the argument of this article is based or to have overlooked them. As was noted above, for instance, García speculated on Moral’s role in the dismissal of Bolín because of a report he wrote in July 1937 to brief Alba on the work of the Friends of National Spain up until that point. This report, García notes, shows that Moral travelled to Salamanca in May 1937 with Arthur Loveday. This report provides a valuable insight but the correspondence between Moral and Alba helps one better understand the situation from Moral’s own perspective and tells us a number of things. Firstly, this correspondence provides context for this visit and exactly what Moral hoped to say to Franco’s government while there. Secondly, that historians have not cited these letters perhaps helps to explain why they have not linked Moral directly to the appointment of Alba or emphasized their close relationship. Indeed, the letters show that Alba was in constant contact with Moral during the first year of the Civil War. Moreover, that Moral later retired to Southern Rhodesia and donated his personal papers to what is now the National Archives of Zimbabwe has made studying him a more difficult task for western scholars who have researched Anglo-Spanish relations during the Civil War. Thirdly, the letters show that Moral wrote to Alba in English and their content suggests that this was because Moral was far from proficient in Spanish, which helps one understand some of his limitations when dealing with Salamanca. Fourthly, as will be shown, the correspondence shows that the account of the developments that led to the Duke of Alba’s diplomatic mission provided by Bolín is demonstrably inaccurate. In fact, Alba already had plans, after a discussion with Franco in late April, to go to London to help with the organization of rebel propaganda there. Only during Moral’s visit to Salamanca, where he met Franco, did this seem to become a diplomatic mission and set Anglo-Spanish relations on a new course.

The first part of the article focuses on Moral’s life and family history in order to understand why he was able to play such a pivotal role in organizing pro-Franco propaganda in Britain but also why his influence on Franco’s foreign policy was so limited until his trip to Salamanca in May 1937. In this sense, it complements the work of other historians by providing a more detailed background. The second section examines the role Moral played as a propagandist in London and the frustrations he had about how Franco conducted his foreign policy towards Britain during the first year of the Civil War. This builds on the work of others by looking at the situation from Moral’s personal perspective, rather than official state records. The final section then shows how all of this led to Moral travelling to Spain in May 1937 after the destruction of Guernica and potentially bringing about important changes to Francoist foreign policy and the nature of Anglo-Spanish relations.

The Marquis del Moral: The Embodiment of ‘National’ Spain’s Values

Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson became the eighth Marquis del Moral in February 1925. The title dates back to the eighteenth century but the Bertodano family line can be traced back as far as at least 1200 among Spain’s original nobility known as the ‘ricos hombres’. From the year 1500, members of this family held influential positions within Spanish society. In December 1765, King Carlos III of Spain conferred the titles Marquis del Moral and Vizconde de Bertodano on Don Bernardo de Bertodano, Knight of Santiago and Hereditary Governor of Valencia. By the mid nineteenth century, the Bertodano line had established, through marriage, firm connections with the British aristocracy. The fifth Marquis del Moral, Román Ramón Xavier de Bertodano y López, was the eighth Marquis’ grandfather and had resided in England for twenty-five years by the time he succeeded to the title in 1860. While living in England, Román Ramón married Henrietta Pattison, an English woman and daughter of James Pattison, in December 1837. James Pattison was a Director of the Bank of England between 1813 and 1849 and Governor between 1834 and 1837. On two occasions, in the 1830s and 1840s, he represented the City in Parliament.¹³

Francisco Serrat y Bonastre, a Spanish diplomat and General Franco’s first minister of foreign affairs in the Civil War, referred to Moral as the ‘hijo de un antiguo diplomático nuestro’. Historian Ángel Viñas, editor of Serrat’s memoirs, therefore suggested Moral’s father was probably Miguel Bertodano y Pattison, a Spanish diplomat who had served in the embassies at Bucharest, Paris, Rome, Berlin, St Petersburg, Stockholm and London.¹⁴ In fact, this diplomat, who was the sixth Marquis, was Moral’s uncle and died in 1890. One of his brothers, Baldomero Jacinto de Bertodano, then became the seventh Marquis del Moral. Baldomero was born in London in 1844 and at the age of twenty-one became a British citizen. He lived in England his whole life and was a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature, practising under the name of Baldomero Hyacinth de Bertodano López. He died in 1921 and the heir to the title was his brother, Ramón Eduardo de Bertodano. Ramón Eduardo was British by birth but at the time lived in San Francisco and decided to renounce the title which led his son, Frederick Ramón, to become the eighth Marquis del Moral in 1925.

Moral clearly had firm ties to both the British and Spanish aristocracies but it was also his own experiences that allowed him to play such a crucial role in the Civil War. A year before he was born in New South Wales, Australia in 1871, Moral’s father had moved from England and soon after married Mary Jane Brand.¹⁵ Mary was daughter of William Wilson, another British emigrant who owned much of the land known now as Wollongong and a founder of the Richmond River Settlement.¹⁶ His childhood education could have taken place in either Britain or Australia, but probably the latter. Indeed, Julia Camoys Stonor, the niece of Gytha Stourton, Moral’s second wife, claimed in a family memoir that Moral attended the Jesuit Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England which was a popular education destination for the children of Spanish aristocrats.¹⁷ However, if Moral did travel from faraway Australia to attend Stonyhurst during his childhood, he made little mention of it later in life when explaining his relationship with Great Britain. At any rate, it is certain that he attended university in Australia.

After finishing a law degree at St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney, Moral moved to Britain at the age of twenty-four. At this stage Moral seems to have settled in Britain somewhat permanently and solidified his ties to both the British and Spanish aristocracies. During a business trip in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, in 1893 he enlisted in the British Army to take part in the First Matabele War (1893–1894). He would then serve in the British Army on at least two more occasions. Firstly, during the Second Boer War as part of the 3^rd and 6^th Battalions of the Manchester Regiment, and secondly, as a Major in the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry and then as 2^nd Grade Officer on the General Staff from 1915 in the First World War.¹⁸ In 1907 he had married Lady Ida Elizabeth Dalzell (1876–bef. 1934), a daughter of the eleventh Earl of Carnwath, with whom he had six children. His second wife, Gytha Stourton (1904–1992), whom he married in 1934, was a member of one of the oldest Catholic families in England who had maintained an influential position in higher social circles since before the Reformation.¹⁹

From 1928, Moral began working for Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera’s Patronato Nacional del Turismo in London and maintained close contact both with him and King Alfonso XIII for the remainder of the 1920s. It was during this period that Moral became a Spanish citizen and gave up his British citizenship. Twice, in 1925 and 1928, Moral petitioned for a licence to use his Spanish nobility title as a British subject but this was rejected on both occasions. Since 1893, successive British monarchs had adopted a general rule introduced by Queen Victoria whereby the Home Office would refuse all requests by British subjects for a Royal Licence to use foreign titles in Britain.²⁰ After the second refusal, Moral became a Spanish citizen on 21 November 1928 ‘for important family reasons’, which probably included property and wealth inheritance, which then allowed him to use the title in Britain.²¹ However, Moral failed to inform the Home Office about his becoming a Spanish citizen and when the Spanish ambassador at London, the Marquis de Merry del Val, presented Moral using his Spanish title at a levée on 2 June 1930, the Home Office began an investigation into why, after having his request refused on two occasions, he continued to use this title. It transpired that Moral did not know he needed to take any action in England but he promised to register himself as an alien at Hampstead Police Station. Both Southworth and García suggested Moral possessed Spanish and British nationality when discussing his activities in the 1930s. However, while Moral was, technically, both a British and Spanish citizen between late 1928 and 1930, during 1930s he was a Spanish citizen residing in Britain.²²

Moral was an opponent of the Spanish Second Republic from its inception in 1931 and between then and 1936 built the foundations of a pro-Franco propaganda network which during the Civil War would have links to some of the most influential people in Britain. In May 1937, this network became known officially as the Friends of National Spain and its list of members included several British Members of Parliament and peers. In his memoirs, Luis Bolín, who in the 1920s was the London correspondent of the Spanish newspaper ABC and worked closely with Moral, seems deliberately to have downplayed Moral’s importance or simply taken the opportunity to exaggerate his own involvement in these developments. Where he briefly mentioned Moral, for instance, Bolín claimed that he and the Duke of Alba established ‘a group of English “Friends of Spain” ’ which Moral joined later on in the Civil War as if he played no major role in the group’s activities, although he does not specify when Moral apparently joined.²³ Moreover, Bolín took credit for a book titled The Spanish Republic: A Survey of Two Years of Progress which was a disparaging appraisal of the Republic’s social and political reforms between 1931 and 1933. According to Bolín’s account, he was the sole author of this book and published it anonymously because ‘to append my own name would have been risky’.²⁴ In fact, Bolín wrote this with Moral and British author and publisher Douglas Jerrold, who at the time was director of Eyre & Spottiswoode, the company which published the book and several pro-Franco books and pamphlets during the Civil War.²⁵ Regarding the ‘Friends of Spain’ group to which Bolín refers, according to Jerrold’s own memoirs, this was the initiative of the British historian Sir Charles Petrie but Moral was ‘the energising factor’ whose ‘remarkable and buoyant personality and overflowing hospitality kept our small group in being and in remarkable amity over a number of years’.²⁶

Moral would not only play an active role as a propagandist for the rebels during the Civil War but seems to have had some involvement in the arrangements for the flight in July 1936 that would transport General Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco, from where he would take command of the battle-hardened Army of Africa and launch the military rebellion. Earlier that month, Bolín held clandestine meetings in London with Jerrold to arrange for the plane to transport Franco but Moral is absent in the accounts of the arrangements for this flight.²⁷ However, in the summer of 1937, Alba asked Moral to write a report about propaganda operations in Britain over the previous year. In this report, handed to Alba in July, Moral provided details of his own involvement in these operations and showed his knowledge of these clandestine arrangements for the flight:

If we had received information sooner, preparations could have been made to communicate the proper facts as to why the movement had been inaugurated. There would have been no risk of a leak, as on 2 July arrangements were made to send an aeroplane from England to Las Palmas to take Franco to Morocco [ … ] Antecedent information of the Rising could have been kept quite as secretly as was the aeroplane flight.²⁸

Clearly, Moral was in contact with the right people for him to know of these arrangements to some degree, although it is impossible to say exactly what level of involvement he had. As Southworth put it, Moral ‘worked behind the scenes’.²⁹

All of this helps to explain Moral’s activities during the Civil War and his motivations. Indeed, he owned land in Spain, had Catholic connections, a military background—which was a common characteristic of British supporters of Franco—, ties to the Spanish royal family and had been a supporter of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. As an opponent of the Republic since its inception, it was perhaps natural that Moral would use the connections he had in Britain to rally support for the military rebels trying to overthrow it and establish a regime more in line with his own ideological preferences. A key development came soon after the outbreak of the Civil War on 2 August, when Juan de la Cierva, inventor of the autogyro—antecedent of the modern helicopter—, brought Catalan ship owner Alfonso Olano and the Marquis de Portago, a close friend of Alfonso XIII, to Moral’s house to ask if he would use his connections in London to undertake press and propaganda work. According to Moral, he agreed but suggested the only way of carrying out such work was to form a ‘small committee and to collaborate in everything’.³⁰ Olano and Portago apparently declined to work with a committee of this nature, although Moral’s report does not state exactly why. Nevertheless, this helps to explain why, as will be shown below, there were tensions between those working on propaganda operations in London—Olano and Moral in particular—not least because De la Cierva seemed to have initiated this meeting but died in a plane accident at Croydon airfield on 9 December 1936.³¹

Although they rejected his suggestion of a committee, Moral worked with Olano and Portago along with De la Cierva and the first and second secretaries of the Spanish Embassy at London, the Conde de Torata and José Fernández-Villaverde, who both defected to the rebels after the rising.³² Moreover, the request that Moral help with propaganda does not seem to have been the result of official orders from Spain. Indeed, Moral was relatively unknown in Salamanca, as will be shown in greater detail below, but it is worth pointing out here that Serrat y Bonastre, Franco’s first minister of foreign affairs, in a memoir covering the period from October 1936 to April 1937 and written shortly afterwards, noted that ‘con cierta independencia se había constituido en defensor de los intereses españoles un marqués del Moral, hijo de un antiguo diplomático nuestro, más inglés que español’.³³ This suggests that Moral often worked on his own initiative and below it will be shown that his letters to Alba confirm this. Moreover, given that Olano and Portago rejected his proposal to form a committee, the fact that the Friends of National Spain would be formed in the Spring of 1937, with some resistance from Olano at least, is also evidence that Moral worked often as an independent actor. In the meantime, however, Moral utilized his connections within the British establishment to improve the reputation of the military rebels.

One of the first major tasks Moral assigned himself was to try to convince the Foreign Office and the British government that the rebellion was a pre-emptive response to an imminent communist insurrection. In August, he gave the Foreign Office copies of what he described as the plans for this communist plot in order to convince British policy makers and advisors that the rebels were waging a legitimate battle against the spread of communism in Europe. In his cover letter to the Foreign Office, he claimed he had ‘secured, after much difficulty, certain secret reports and orders of the Socialist-Communist Headquarters in Spain for the rising projected between 3 May and 29 June but postponed’, although he did not reveal who gave him the documents. At any rate, as Southworth and Moradiellos have highlighted, nobody in the Foreign Office took these documents seriously, not least because the Foreign Office had become aware of them two months earlier and concluded they were fake.³⁴

In the Autumn of 1936, Moral took charge of arranging for the publication in Britain of translated rebel propaganda reports on atrocities committed in the Republican zone in Spain. This report, published in October under the title A Preliminary Official Report on the Atrocities Committed in Southern Spain in July and August, 1936, went into graphic detail on what had happened in territory now occupied by the rebels.³⁵ In October Moral established contact with Winston Churchill and correspondence between the two indicates that he sent him an advance copy of this report.³⁶ According to a letter Churchill sent to Anthony Eden on 31 October, Churchill ‘had an interview’ with Moral, who was ‘the informal representative of the insurgents’.³⁷ Moral’s goal was likely to use Churchill as a propaganda tool because, although he advocated a policy of strict neutrality, Churchill’s anti-communism led to some open displays of sympathy for the military rebels.³⁸ After meeting for lunch one afternoon to discuss the situation in Spain, Churchill, as Moral hoped, then passed this atrocity report to the Foreign Office.³⁹ Interestingly, along with the report Churchill also forwarded Eden a letter from Moral, which he found ‘interesting’.⁴⁰ When Eden returned the letter, Churchill sent it to his advisor, Desmond Morton, but asked him to destroy it after reading it and also to tell Moral that he ‘transmitted his communications to an influential quarter’.⁴¹

Churchill’s private papers suggest his subsequent contact with Moral was sporadic, but a few months later, in February 1937, Moral hoped to use Churchill again and sent him an advance copy of the next atrocity report, which included a preface by British author and close friend of several politicians, Arthur Bryant.⁴² It is worth pointing out that Moral was also heavily involved in the publication of this atrocity report. For instance, when Alba expressed discomfort in a letter to Moral about Bryant’s suggestion that Spain had been ‘misgoverned in the past’, Moral dismissed his concerns and said ‘[i]t was important to get the preface done by a well-known man like Bryant and we could only get this on the condition that it would not be edited or altered. We had to accept in toto or refuse it’. Despite the reference to past incompetence, Moral argued ‘the value of Bryant’s preface in my opinion quite outweighed this’ and said Bryant gave ‘splendid criticisms’ of the Republic.⁴³

The introductory material to the first report was written by a much less high-profile figure. Unlike the original Spanish publication of the Preliminary Official Report, the English translation contained a ‘Historical Note’ which provided a background on social and political developments in Spain leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War and it is highly likely that Moral wrote this himself. Indeed, in December 1936, Evening Standard journalist Nigel Tangye visited someone at the London headquarters of the agents working for the Spanish rebels to discuss the Civil War before heading to Spain to gather material for a book he planned to write about the conflict. Tangye later said that an individual to whom he spoke told him to read the atrocity report before going to Spain and added that he had ‘written a brief history of the events that led up to the revolution’ within it. This white-haired man, according to Tangye, was ‘tall and slim’ and had a face which ‘revealed the breeding and culture that somehow one expects from the Spanish aristocracy’; being sixty-seven years old at the time, Moral would certainly fit this description.⁴⁴ Indeed, Moral’s niece through his marriage to Gytha, Julia Stonor, described Moral in her memoir as a ‘handsomely-boned and tall Spanish grandee’.⁴⁵

Although he stayed behind the scenes, by early 1937 Moral had firmly established himself as the primary cog in the wheel of Francoist propaganda in Britain and his connections allowed him gradually to expand this network and disseminate rebel propaganda to an increasingly larger audience. Eleanora Tennant, an Australian-born fascist sympathizer who stood as a Conservative candidate for the seat of Silvertown, Essex, in the 1931 and 1935 general elections, for instance, travelled to Spain in 1936 and wrote an account of her experiences there. Tennant claimed she went to Spain prepared to form an impartial opinion of the two sides but conditions in the Republican zone apparently prompted her to write a vehement anti-communist diatribe against the Republic.⁴⁶ In January 1937, Lady Londonderry, an influential society hostess and close friend of Ramsay MacDonald, recommended several people to whom Moral should send copies of Tennant’s account. According to his correspondence with Alba, Moral subsequently turned Tennant into a mouthpiece for rebel propaganda in Britain and arranged for her to speak at public meetings across the country.⁴⁷ Charles Saroléa, Professor at the University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, also invited her to speak at a gathering at his house on the Royal Terrace, where she told her listeners that there were no Italian troops in Spain and that the burning of churches and murder and torture of priests and nuns were the result of communists working under direct orders.⁴⁸

Moral himself was no stranger to Members of Parliament. Through his contacts in London, he was able to attend social events at which he could meet sympathizers of the rebels and thereby widen his influence among influential groups of people.⁴⁹ In January 1937, for example, several Conservative MPs invited Moral and the Marquis de Merry del Val, former Spanish Ambassador to London between 1913 and 1931, to a meeting at the House of Commons to discuss the threat of communism in Spain.⁵⁰ By March, Moral had begun to construct a cohesive group with the set aim of influencing the British government’s policy towards the Civil War. On 31 March, for instance, he wrote to the Duke of Alba:

I do not care for the political position. There is a good deal of labour unrest and strikes have been carefully fostered in some of the armament factories [ … ] They will probably try and put pressure on the government to relax the ban on supplies to Madrid. We are endeavouring to intensify our propaganda in political circles and for this reason are trying to get together a strong General Committee which can work under the direction of a smaller Directing Committee.⁵¹

In May this ‘General Committee’ became the Friends of National Spain and incorporated several Conservative MPs and peers who gladly converted themselves into spokesmen for Franco in London.

Prominent members of the Friends of National Spain included Victor Cazalet, Henry Page Croft, Robert Tatton Bower, all of whom were Conservative MPs and outspoken supporters of Franco, Lord Howarth of Penrith, who had previously been British Ambassador to Madrid where he played an important role in the Comité Hispano-Inglés and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Primo de Rivera coup of 1923, and Lord Phillimore, who became President of the group. The Friends of National Spain was perhaps most important in providing Franco not only with several supportive voices in the House of Commons which could deflect criticisms of the government’s non-intervention policy, but also with direct influence on parliamentary debates as his government would determine the content of the information that these MPs received directly from Spain. Indeed, Moral, and later Alba, met regularly with these MPs at the latter’s office in Hans Place in London to discuss what questions they would ask in the House and to supply them with the latest information from Salamanca with which they could counter criticisms of the government’s policy. In July 1937, Moral wrote a report in which he summarized the links with British MPs:

A valuable link has been formed with our friends in Parliament with regard to the questions that are asked. Any questions set down on the subject of Spain are communicated to this office at 10am every morning. The replies to these are delivered to the House of Commons by 2.30pm, in time for the afternoon meetings. By this means Members of Parliament and this office keep in touch with the manoeuvres of the Socialist Opposition. This is working satisfactorily and will be further developed.⁵²

In some cases, these MPs could also derail debates when the government was under heavy criticism. In April 1938, for instance, MPs were questioning the government on the diplomatic status of the Duke of Alba after news emerged that he and his staff were regarded officially as diplomats in all but name. This was a contentious issue because those critical of the non-intervention policy viewed it as a step towards the full diplomatic recognition of Franco’s government. Parliamentary Under-Secretary Rab Butler tried to dodge criticism by saying certain privileges had to be granted so that Sir Robert Hodgson, Alba’s counterpart in rebel Spain from November 1937, could receive the same but that this did not amount to diplomatic status. Unsatisfied by the response, a Jewish Labour Party MP, Manny Shinwell, interjected, ‘[i]s not the honourable Gentleman’s answer just a piece of humbug, and will he stop this hypocrisy? Why does not the honourable Member answer?’ Robert Tatton Bower then interrupted and shouted, ‘[g]o back to Poland!’ Interpreting this as an anti-Semitic remark, Shinwell caused a furore when he crossed the House and punched Bower in the face.⁵³

An Unappreciated Agent

Not only does the work that Moral undertook in Britain highlight his importance as an individual in rebel propaganda, but his frustrations provoked by a lack of appreciation for this work in Salamanca provides a valuable insight into Francoist attitudes towards the British government during the first year of the Civil War. In December 1936, for instance, the Daily Express approached Moral with the intention of arranging for one of its correspondents to go to rebel territory. After eventually arranging for one of the newspaper’s correspondents to go to Spain, the Salamanca authorities soon expelled him in retaliation for the Daily Express publishing articles with news from Republican territory as well as that of the rebels. After the expulsion of the correspondent, Moral fumed to the Duke of Alba:

It seems rather absurd that because a paper published news from both fronts that a correspondent who was not responsible for it should be punished [ … ] The ridiculous part of it is that Bolín complains in letters to me that there are more correspondents on the Red side than there are on Franco’s, and yet everything is done to disgruntle the people that are on his side, even those that are heart and soul for Franco. They must either be mad or so short-sighted that they cannot realise the bad effect this is going to have later on. Franco cannot afford to treat with contempt the foreign press [ … ] Unless a big change takes place there is not an earthly chance of Franco getting a loan in London with a hostile press—also if other similar incidents occur every paper will take its correspondent away!⁵⁴

Other British newspapers raised the same issue with Moral. People at the Daily Mail, for instance, who he said had ‘always been our good friends’, spoke to him ‘on several occasions’ about the ‘unfortunate attitude that is adopted at Salamanca’. Moral believed that José Antonio de Sangróniz, Franco’s head of foreign relations, could have fixed the situation if he had been willing to ‘speak up and take a strong attitude in the matter’ but attributed his short-sightedness, and that of others within Franco’s government, to personal ambitions to secure a post in the new regime once the Civil War was over.⁵⁵

These issues seemed to be mirrored by tensions within the London committee. In early March, for example, Moral said he was ‘snowed under with work’ but much of his time was ‘wasted in unnecessary arguments about small matters!!’⁵⁶ Moral had a particularly difficult relationship with his colleague Olano, who had opposed the idea of being part of a committee. According to Moral, Olano was

[ … ] one of those men who will not let people do their own job which they know better than he does, and must argue over every point. He has done fine work in his own line, but this sort of thing slows up our work [ … ] A great pity—but I try to help things on for the sake of the country.⁵⁷

The British government’s policy then exacerbated the difficulties against which Moral was contending. At the end of the month, Franco’s navy blockaded Spain’s northern coast in an attempt to starve supporters of the Republic and drain their morale. Franco then threatened to resist by force any ships that ran the blockade and warned that sea mines were in place to deter any ships thinking of taking the risk of running the blockade. Those within the British government who at this stage were unwilling to appease Franco, however, ignored warnings and Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, ensured that the Royal Navy would protect British shipping up to the three-mile limit.⁵⁸

As relations between Franco and the British government worsened and the press became much more hostile towards the rebels, Moral was well placed to solve the situation, although he faced a number of obstacles. By early April, several of Moral’s British contacts recommended that he go to Salamanca and speak with Franco directly about the increasing hostility in Britain towards the rebel government. Moral, however, hesitated because he felt Olano would do all he could to prevent this. For his part, Olano wanted to assign the journey to some of the British supporters who would soon join the Friends of National Spain but Moral considered it ‘absurd’ to ask this of a group that was only just ‘in the process of formation’.⁵⁹ Moral reported these concerns to Alba, informing him that ‘[t]o be quite frank about it there has been so much pettiness and jealousy that I fear that if I go, which will certainly not be favourably viewed by my colleague, that my efforts may be torpedoed from this end’.⁶⁰ Moral recommended that Olano himself go to Salamanca instead but complained to Alba that he ‘funks the job unless he can be sure of success, but it is hardly a question of personal success when it is a matter of the country, and may mean a tremendous thing for Franco’.⁶¹

Exactly why there was such tension between Moral and Olano in their professional relationship is difficult to establish from this correspondence alone, but it could simply have been that Olano lacked confidence in Moral’s ability to have a positive impact in any discussions he had in Salamanca. Indeed, aside from any opposition he would face from Olano, Moral had his own concerns about taking on this responsibility. One issue was that, although Moral seemed to read well in Spanish, he seems to have lacked any level of proficiency. For instance, he told Alba that if he did go to Salamanca, his ‘chief trouble’ would be ‘the language difficulty, as I cannot argue sufficiently well to meet the arguments of others, and it would be somewhat difficult to get my views definitely and clearly expressed to some of those against whom I am acting’.⁶² He also wrote to Alba in English and, according to his Record of Services from the First World War, under the section asking for abilities in foreign languages, he wrote ‘No’.⁶³

Another issue was that Moral, as noted above, was not very well-known personally to those within Franco’s government, although some knew of his activities, and he was not unaware of the limits of his influence in Salamanca. As he told Alba when he was considering making the journey to Salamanca, those in Franco’s government did not know much about him personally or ‘the work I have done for the last ten years’, such as mobilizing opposition to the Republic between 1931 and 1936 or working for Primo de Rivera’s Patronato Nacional del Turismo in the 1920s.⁶⁴ This lack of recognition vexed him and he told Alba:

I think it is most essential that my position in these matters here should be recognised by Salamanca in the sense that I should be regarded as a responsible worker and communicated with directly, and not through other sources only. It will strengthen my position enormously and will help in other respects.⁶⁵

Accordingly, Moral asked if he were eventually to go to Salamanca that Alba be present to help with these difficulties. This also contradicts the level of influence some historians have assumed Moral had with the Franco regime during the Civil War. Jay Corrin, for instance, claimed Moral had ‘personal access’ to Franco which seems unlikely given how little was known about him among Franco’s government.⁶⁶

It is not entirely clear why none of these ‘other sources’ with whom Salamanca communicated directly could have taken on this role, although the reason was probably that those within the London committee, including British members, wanted the mission not to have any official connection to Franco’s government. Serrat y Bonastre wrote in his memoir, for instance, that the Salamanca government had initially intended to use the Marquis de Merry del Val but

[ … ] por esas sutilezas de la hipocresía inglesa, el gobierno había hecho saber que no escucharía a nadie que por su situación personal pudiera atribuirse una representación oficial. El resultado era que no teníamos en Londres a ningún agente determinado, ni para tratar con el gobierno, ni para hacer propaganda o mover la prensa. La muerte trágica de La Cierva dejó un vacío que a estas horas no se ha llenado aún, que yo sepa.⁶⁷

This would also explain why Olano seemed quite insistent on British members of the burgeoning Friends of National Spain going to Salamanca instead of Moral. In this sense, Moral was the perfect candidate. He was well-connected to important people in London but conducted his activities somewhat unofficially with little recognition from the authorities in Salamanca.

Complaints from the British press continued throughout the spring of 1937. Despite Moral’s efforts to warn Salamanca about the situation, all he received was ‘an occasional statement that a new [propaganda] organisation is being prepared, but nothing effective has so far been done’. Meanwhile, he warned that the Republic’s propaganda had been ‘intensified and is excellently conducted’ while Franco’s reputation was deteriorating rapidly. He told Alba in a letter on 21 April:

I can assure that you that I am beginning to fear about the way things are being conducted, and I am really weary of the wasted work that I and others have been putting into this business for months past. One’s advice is rarely accepted and the people at the head of everything appear to be grossly incompetent.⁶⁸

Evidently, Moral was growing increasingly disgruntled at the way propaganda operations were organized and carried out in Salamanca.

Concerned that the British government might soon find itself unable to resist pressure to modify its policy towards the Civil War and lacking confidence in Salamanca’s willingness to prevent this, Moral resorted to his own methods. On 23 April, he wrote to Lord Howard of Penrith, urging him to use his influence with Members of Parliament to exert pressure on the British government to adhere to a strict policy of neutrality. The communist newspaper Daily Worker, however, exposed Moral’s attempts to influence the British government when it somehow obtained a copy of his letter to Howard and published it on 29 April.⁶⁹ The leak, which Moral claimed was the work of either ‘theft’ or a ‘traitor’, also resulted in his receiving ‘half-a-dozen letters of abuse’ for which he attempted to file a lawsuit against the newspaper.⁷⁰ Indeed, the newspaper claimed this letter represented Moral’s ‘demands for more British backing for mass murders in Spain’. Coming just three days after the destruction of Guernica, it pushed Moral to reconsider going to Salamanca. Southworth suggests that the plan to send Moral to Spain emerged in response to Guernica, but, as indicated by Moral’s correspondence with Alba, Guernica merely accelerated the plans to go.⁷¹

The Destruction of Guernica and the Shift in Franco’s Foreign Policy

Franco’s government flatly denied its involvement in the destruction of Guernica and placed the blame on anarchists and communists fighting for the Republic.⁷² However, only devoted followers of the rebels believed this propaganda. For many in Britain, including the government and the Foreign Office, the numerous reports published on the town’s destruction proved beyond doubt who was responsible.⁷³ Accordingly, while Moral believed the Francoist denials, he recognized that the Salamanca government needed to make a much stronger effort to palliate the effect reports of Guernica’s destruction had on British public and elite political opinion towards Franco. As he told Alba on 4 May, ‘the publication in the press of the reports of the destruction of Guernica have lost us many thousands of friends, and we have not had any information from Salamanca except a denial which they issued directly there’.⁷⁴

How the rebels handled the controversy surrounding Guernica demonstrated they had not heeded Moral’s warnings about the increasing hostility in Britain towards them during the previous months and that Franco cared little for British opinion. Rather than make any real effort to suppress claims they were responsible, the rebels accused the British and French press of ‘serving Soviet aims’ and lamented that these press organs had not paid any attention to the murder of over ‘100,000’ people at the hands of the ‘Red hordes’ in Spain but were now suddenly outraged by the destruction of Guernica. Franco’s government did not do itself any favours with the way it denied responsibility. The official line was that the ‘Reds’ were responsible, but his government and representatives spent much time saying that Guernica was a legitimate military target and even if the rebel air force had destroyed it, it would have been justified in doing so. This was an odd and confusing means of denying the atrocity.⁷⁵

Although Moral himself believed Franco’s denial of responsibility for Guernica, the way the rebel government handled the situation irritated him, especially as it presented British supporters of the Republic with a ‘splendid opportunity’ to discredit the rebels and their links with the Axis Powers. Three days after Guernica, Moral wrote to Alba that there would have to be ‘plain speaking’ at any meeting he had in Salamanca:

It is essential that the Generalísimo should appreciate the position from the point of view of our English friends. We have a decidedly hostile press here, and it is difficult to counteract statements like those in The Times yesterday of the bombing of Guernica etc., which has been strongly denied by Salamanca. The whole business of the bombing seems to be peculiar. When it was published we did not believe that our troops had done it, as it would appear to have been a great mistake, knowing that it would probably stir up the Basque feeling.⁷⁶

Despite the impact Guernica had on British public and elite political opinion, Olano still maintained his opposition to Moral’s going to Salamanca. Olano argued not only that Moral would not be able to meet Franco personally, but, even if he did, that Franco would not tolerate complaints about his staff.⁷⁷ It is worth pointing out that there was logic behind Olano’s reservations and that he was not simply oblivious to the blow to Franco’s reputation in London. He recommended, for instance, sending General Walter Maxwell-Scott and Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, both Boer War and First World War veterans, instead. Both had visited Spain in March and met Franco, which perhaps offered some advantage over Moral who, as noted, was relatively unknown in Salamanca.⁷⁸ However, the recently created Friends of National Spain insisted on Moral travelling to Spain with Arthur Loveday, a British businessman who acted as Moral’s advisor and previously worked as an informant for British intelligence services, and finally pushed him to commit to the journey during the week following the destruction of Guernica.⁷⁹

Moral and Loveday left for Spain via Paris on Saturday 8 May and arrived in Salamanca on the Monday evening. To Moral’s relief, Alba had confirmed he would be present at his meetings in Salamanca, which would have helped Moral overcome any language barriers and boost his prestige. Before departing, Moral told Alba that ‘certain diplomatic channels, not English, have represented most strongly to me the importance that propaganda work here should be properly carried out, and that it is not possible for Salamanca itself to do this’. By ‘diplomatic channels’, Moral was probably referring to Italian, German or Portuguese diplomats, or all three. It is likely that these concerns added weight to Moral’s own arguments and helped him to reinforce his view that ‘we on the spot’ were the only people that could carry out this work. The Guernica incident made it more necessary than ever that Salamanca paid attention to what Moral was saying:

We cannot possibly do it without the necessary information so often asked for, and if and when received always too late. For two months we have been told that the reorganisation there was being carried out, but nothing has been done, and the delay in doing anything effective in connection with Guernica has been the most serious blow that the Nationalist cause has yet received.⁸⁰

As his correspondence with Alba makes clear, Moral arrived in Salamanca frustrated but with clear ideas about what needed to change.

Exactly what happened during Moral’s visit is unclear due to lack of documentary evidence, but Moral claimed to have had at least one ‘long interview’ with Franco, who granted him permission to travel to Guernica and conduct an investigation before returning to England to reveal his findings to audiences there. Moral discussed this once back in London, when Henry Page Croft invited him to address an audience in the House of Commons on the subject of Guernica. Moral said nothing new, merely repeating the official but somewhat confusing Francoist line, and he divulged no details about the meeting he said he had with Franco.⁸¹

At any rate, Moral’s visit coincided with a major shift in Francoist propaganda operations. This could merely have been a coincidence or that Moral was simply one more voice in favour of these changes taking place, but his letters to Alba show that the changes made were along the lines of what he had been complaining about in this correspondence. Franco, for instance, dismissed Bolín as his chief press officer, which paved the way for a revamp of propaganda operations. Moral had complained frequently about Bolín in his correspondence with Alba because he was slow at getting information to London, if at all, which contradicts Southworth’s suggestion that Moral and Bolín were friends.⁸² In fact, Moral resented that Olano and Bolín often wrote to each other privately and that he never saw their letters. As he had told Alba in early May, ‘[h]e carries on a correspondence with Bolín and others which I never see, though titbits of information are occasionally given to me, but the whole position is almost impossible’.⁸³ Moral apparently summarized his feelings towards Bolín a year later in a letter to Arthur Bryant, renowned historian and friend of several British politicians:

Bolín was in charge of the Press for a year and was very largely responsible for the appallingly bad press which the Nationalist Cause received [in Britain]. It was another case of ‘putting a beggar on horseback’, i.e. in his case a man who had never had authority and who had no sense of proportion.⁸⁴

Moreover, the people working for Franco in London installed a radio at their office in Hans Place with which they could receive regular and up-to-date information from Salamanca once the authorities there made significant improvements in the technical output capabilities of stations in the rebel zone.⁸⁵ Perhaps most significantly, Franco’s propaganda department also adopted a more welcoming attitude towards British correspondents and even provisioned cars to take them around the country and the department began to send daily cables from Salamanca with the latest information to pass onto the press.⁸⁶

The most important outcome of the Salamanca visit was the appointment of the Duke of Alba as Franco’s diplomatic agent. Moral, perhaps with Alba’s help, seems to have been responsible for this development but Luis Bolín later took credit for Alba’s appointment in his memoirs:

When I heard what the foreign press was publishing about Guernica I went to see General Franco. It was a Sunday [2 May] [ … ] It was a pleasant spring day, and as we paced the shade I ventured the view that it was time we had somebody in London, qualified to speak for us in the right quarters. Only the Reds had diplomatic representatives in England. Juan de la Cierva had been killed there in a plane crash a few months before. One of his wartime associates, the Marqués de Portago, had carried on his work with others and was obtaining results, but we needed someone of greater weight and influence. I mentioned two names, and added that of the two, the Duke of Alba seemed the better choice. As much at home in England as in Spain, he knew everyone in London and had the entrée everywhere. ‘Where is he?’ asked Franco. ‘At Las Dueñas, his home in Seville’. Days later, Alba arrived at Claridge’s.⁸⁷

Not only did Bolín fail to mention the role Moral played, but his claims are also demonstrably incorrect. Indeed, according to the correspondence between Alba and Moral, more than two weeks before Moral arrived in Salamanca, on 22 April, Alba met Franco to discuss the concerns Moral had been writing to him about throughout the Spring of 1937. After the meeting, Alba returned to Seville and then arranged to go to London. Moral reserved rooms for him at Claridge’s Hotel for the end of May, although Alba had yet to decide on the exact date he would arrive.⁸⁸ It seems unlikely that on 2 May, ten days after travelling to Salamanca, Alba’s whereabouts would have been unknown to Franco as Bolín seems to suggest in the quoted passage. Moreover, on 6 May, Olano wrote to Alba to inform him of the formation of the Friends of National Spain and added, ‘[m]ucho me alegraré vengas pronto por aquí, pues además de tener el gran placer de verte, apreciamos en muy alto tu ayuda y colaboración’.⁸⁹ Given that Olano said nothing about Alba’s arrival in London being a major step in Anglo-rebel diplomatic relations it seems more likely at this stage that Alba’s trip was simply intended to offer some assistance in organizing and producing rebel propaganda, as he had done earlier in the Civil War.⁹⁰

It could perhaps have been poor phrasing or that his memory had failed him by the time he wrote his memoirs, but Bolín’s claim that ‘[d]ays later [after 2 May], Alba arrived at Claridge’s’ is also incorrect. Alba arrived in London on 1 June, a whole month after Bolín’s meeting with Franco. Given the evidence from his correspondence with Alba, it seems much more likely that Moral was the driving force behind Alba’s appointment. There are several reasons to believe this. Before arriving in Salamanca, for instance, Moral wrote ‘when Bilbao is captured, I cannot see how the [British] Government can avoid recognition, and this is one of the questions I would like to speak to the Generalísimo about’.⁹¹ Franco was concerned about his international legitimacy and frustrated that the British government had ignored his blockade and still refused to recognize him as a belligerent. Moral clearly had encouraging words to offer that would have made Franco believe he would find more sympathy in Britain if he had somebody working directly for him there and he was better placed than Bolín to make this clear to Franco. When Alba arrived in London on 1 June, he took with him instructions, the principal ones being to counteract ‘Red’ propaganda and convince the British government to recognize Franco.⁹²

Perhaps most importantly, from what Alba wrote once he arrived in London, it can be garnered that Franco appointed him and thereby converted the trip he already had planned into a diplomatic mission. On 1 June, for instance, Alba wrote to Salamanca to inform the rebel government he had arrived and what his plans were. Significantly, he mentioned that Franco appointed him on 14 May. As Moral arrived in Salamanca on 10 May and spent at least a few days there, one can say without doubt that Alba was appointed while Moral was there.⁹³ Given all of this, it is probable that Moral and Alba made Franco realize that he needed to change course in the way he dealt with the British government.

Conclusion

Historians have been drawn to Alba’s activities in London once he arrived there but Moral remained important beyond this point. Aside from sitting on various committees such as that active in securing the repatriation of Basque refugee children, he often provided, for instance, a crucial link between Alba and the British government. Hugo García has noted Moral’s involvement with these committees but suggests he ‘was relegated to a secondary role’ after Alba got to London.⁹⁴ However, despite Alba knowing many members of the Cabinet personally and some at public events, the government was vulnerable to criticism for any engagement with him because such engagement would suggest a certain degree of diplomatic recognition of the rebel government. Moral therefore provided a better link with the British government because he was not officially recognized by Salamanca as a representative.

One of the first Cabinet members whom Alba met after arriving in June was Lord Hailsham, the Lord High Chancellor. Hailsham was a particularly useful contact to have because he could keep Moral and Alba better informed on how attitudes within the Cabinet developed towards the Civil War which was an advantage which members of the Friends of National Spain did not have. He was also vehemently pro-Franco and after the Civil War ended even became Vice President of the Friends of National Spain.⁹⁵ It was Moral who arranged a meeting between Alba and Hailsham on 16 June at his own home, where Hailsham could speak privately with Alba and divulge information on the attitudes towards Spain of other members of the Cabinet. During this meeting, for example, Hailsham told Alba that it was still too early to know what the new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attitude towards the Civil War was although he did provide a breakdown of attitudes of individual Cabinet members towards Franco.⁹⁶ Although Moral introduced them, Hailsham’s private papers suggest Alba relied on Moral to maintain this link for the rest of the Civil War. Just one month later, for instance, Alba received a letter from his sister-in-law, informing him that she and her twelve-year-old son were trapped in Madrid at the Chilean Embassy. Moral, rather than Alba, passed this letter to Hailsham and asked if the British government or Foreign Office could provide any help. According to Moral’s letter to Hailsham, ‘Alba cannot himself very well approach anybody here under the circumstances’. Alba had in fact met several Cabinet members between arriving in London on 1 June, but this incident shows how informal his links were with the British government.⁹⁷

By focusing on correspondence between Moral and Alba in the first half of 1937, this article has provided a fresh insight both into the rebel government’s attitude towards its relationship with the British government during the first year of the Spanish Civil War and the activities of the Friends of National Spain. As has been shown, the way the Salamanca authorities co-ordinated propaganda was frustrating to those in London trying to further the rebel cause and improve attitudes in Britain towards it. Moreover, rather than focusing on the Duke of Alba, whose importance several historians have highlighted, and his activities in London from the summer of 1937, it has focused on Moral to highlight both his important role during the first year of the conflict and the circumstances that led to Alba’s appointment as a diplomatic agent for the rebels. Indeed, Moral’s frustrations in the months before his trip to Salamanca, expressed in his letters to Alba, provide useful context for the changes that occurred while he was there.

Whether or not Anglo-Spanish relations would have developed on the same or a similar trajectory without Moral’s visit to Salamanca is, of course, impossible to say. At any rate, given the British government’s desire to curry favour with the Franco regime and given that Franco eventually won the Civil War, diplomatic relations would have been established at some point but perhaps at a later date. It is clear, however, that Moral played an important role in Anglo-Spanish relations, and specifically in creating closer ties between the British government and the military rebels and is worthy of further research. Indeed, the cultural turn in diplomatic history has led many to focus on the impact individuals like Moral can have on relations between States. David Jiménez Torres, for instance, has argued the journalist Ramiro de Maeztu was the embodiment of Anglo-Spanish cultural exchanges in the early twentieth century.⁹⁸ Luis Martínez del Campo has examined Spain’s ‘cultural diplomatic infrastructure’ to understand how a relatively weak State can wield power in relations with more powerful states.⁹⁹ Of course, the Iberian Peninsula’s geostrategic position provided Spain with some diplomatic bargaining power, particularly in its relations with Britain. But back-channel diplomats, especially ones such as Moral who deliberately remained in the background, demonstrate the influence a weaker State can establish in its diplomatic relations if it has the right people in the right place at the right time, whether or not it even treats those individuals as its own representatives. As Moral’s case shows, with little direction or support from the people he was trying to help, he was able to foster crucial links between the British government and the military rebels seeking to be recognized as a legitimate government.*

Notes

1 The Comité Hispano-Inglés was part of the Residencia de Estudiantes and received large amounts of funding from Alba during the 1920s and 1930s. The purpose of this committee was, according to a document from its founding meeting on 16 May 1923, ‘fomentar las relaciones intelectuales y culturales entre ambos países’ (i.e., Britain and Spain). On the committee’s activities, such as student exchanges and the organization of conferences as well as Alba’s pivotal role in its work, see Álvaro Ribagorda, ‘El Comité Hispano-Inglés y la Sociedad de Cursos y Conferencias de la Residencia de Estudiantes (1923–1936)’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 30 (2008), 273–91 (p. 277).

2 Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares (AGA), 54/6700, Alba to Sangróniz, 9 June 1937.

3 Rafael Rodríguez-Moñino Soriano, La misión diplomática de Don Jacobo Stuart Fitz James y Falcó, XVII Duque de Alba en la Embajada de España en Londres (1937–1945) (Madrid: Castalia, 1971), 12.

4 Enrique Moradiellos, La perfidia de Albión: el gobierno británico y la guerra civil española (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1996), 188–90.

5 Hugo García, The Truth About Spain! Mobilizing British Public Opinion, 1936–1939 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), 22–29 & 36–43.

6 Herbert R. Southworth, Guernica! Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda, and History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977).

7 Herbert R. Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War: The Brainwashing of Francisco Franco (London/New York: Routledge, 2002).

8 For example, Enrique Moradiellos mentions him briefly; see his Neutralidad benévola: el Gobierno británico y la insurrección militar española de 1936, prólogo de Paul Preston (Oviedo: Pentalfa Ediciones, 1990), 113–14, 200–02.

9 García, The Truth About Spain!, 40.

10 Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War (London: Constable, 2009), 195–96. The Delegación para Prensa y Propaganda was established at the beginning of 1937 and initially led by Vicente Gay Forner, a professor at the Universidad de Valladolid. See Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, Imperio de papel: acción cultural y política exterior durante el primer franquismo (Madrid: CSIC, 1992), 75.

11 Southworth, Guernica!, 388–90.

12 Luis Bolín, Spain: The Vital Years, with a foreword by Sir Arthur Bryant (London: Cassell, 1967), 281. Bolín makes only one passing mention of Moral (p. 123).

13 The National Archives, Kew (TNA) HO 382/467, Moral to George V, 19 February 1925.

14 Francisco Serrat y Bonastre, Salamanca, 1936: memorias del primer ‘ministro’ de Asuntos Exteriores de Franco, edición, estudio final & notas de Ángel Viñas (Barcelona: Crítica, 2014), 90.

15 Most historians have noted this, but Paul Van Wyk incorrectly states Moral was born in Britain. This is likely due to confusion about those who possessed the title prior to the eighth Marquis. See Paul Van Wyk, Burnham: King of Scouts (Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2003), 565.

16 Keith Robert Binney, Horsemen of the First Frontier (1788–1900) and the Serpents Legacy (Sydney: Volcanic Productions, 2005), 344; Anon., ‘Marquis del Moral’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April 1939, p. 2; Anon., ‘The New Spain’, The West Australian, 16 March 1939, p. 10.

17 Julia Camoys Stonor, Sherman’s Wife: A Wartime Childhood amongst the English Catholic Aristocracy (London: Desert Hearts, 2006), 69–71. Jimmy Burns, son of Tom Burns who worked for the Ministry of Information and at the British Embassy at Madrid during the Second World War, also said Moral attended Stonyhurst but seems to have based this assumption on Stonor’s memoir. See Papa Spy: A True Story of Love, Wartime Espionage in Madrid, and the Treachery of the Cambridge Spies (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 151. However, it is evident that Burns used the Westminster Diocesan Archive (WDA) to research his book and might also have based this assumption on a misreading of a letter from Archbishop of Westminster Arthur Hinsley to Winston Churchill recommending Spaniards who might prove useful in advising the British government on how to improve its propaganda in Spain. In the letter, Hinsley mentions Pablo Merry del Val, son of the former Spanish Ambassador to London and Marquis Merry del Val, and his education at Stonyhurst. There is no mention of Moral attending Stonyhurst. See WDA Hi2.217, Hinsley to Churchill, 21 October 1940.

18 TNA WO 374/19022 contains documents relating to Moral’s service during the First World War; TNA HO 382/467, Moral to George V, 19 February 1925.

19 Burns, Papa Spy, 151.

20 This practice dated back to the reign of Elizabeth I, the logic behind this rule being that the use of a foreign title by a British subject might signal divided loyalty between Britain and the foreign State. For a list of requests rejected and granted during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see TNA HO 45/13725.

21 TNA HO 382/467, Moral to Home Office, 14 July 1930.

22 TNA HO 382/467, Moral to Lord Stamfordham, 31 December 1927; Moral to Home Office, 31 July 1930.

23 Bolín, The Vital Years, 123.

24 Bolín, The Vital Years, 123.

25 Anon. [Luis Bolín, Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson & Douglas Jerrold], The Spanish Republic: A Survey of Two Years of Progress (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933).

26 Douglas Jerrold, Georgian Adventure: The Autobiography of Douglas Jerrold (London: William Collins, 1937), 362.

27 Peter Day, Franco’s Friends: How British Intelligence Helped Bring Franco to Power in Spain (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011), 67–72. Jerrold wrote about the arrangements for the Dragon Rapide flight in his memoirs (Georgian Adventure, 367–74).

28 AGA 54/6803, Moral to Alba, ‘Informe hecho por Moral’, July 1937.

29 Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War, 208, note 159.

30 AGA 54/6803, Moral to Alba, ‘Informe hecho por Moral’.

31 AGA 54/6803, Moral to Alba, ‘Informe hecho por Moral’.

32 García, The Truth About Spain!, 41.

33 Serrat y Bonastre, Salamanca, 1936, 90.

34 See FO 371/20538, W 10767, cited in Southworth, Conspiracy, 3–4. Southworth suggested Moral received the documents from Arthur Loveday, or an intermediary between the two, but found no definitive evidence for this, see p. 193, notes 6 & 7 and p. 208, note 159. See also Moradiellos, Neutralidad, 200–02, note 236.

35 Committee of Investigation Appointed by the National Government at Burgos, A Preliminary Official Report on the Atrocities Committed in Southern Spain in July and August, 1936, by the Communist Forces of the Madrid Government. Together with a Brief Historical Note of the Course of Recent Events in Spain (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1936).

36 Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, Winston Churchill papers (CHAR) 2/267, Moral to Churchill, 22 October 1936.

37 CHAR 2/267, Churchill to Eden, 31 October 1936.

38 Churchill was influenced early on in the conflict by reports of atrocities in the Republican zone. When he first met Pablo de Azcárate, the Spanish Republican Ambassador to London in September 1936, for instance, he refused to shake his hand and instead mumbled between his teeth, ‘sangre, sangre … ’. See Pablo de Azcárate, Mi embajada en Londres durante la guerra civil (Barcelona: Ariel, 2012), 35.

39 CHAR 2/260/1, Hankey to Churchill, 2 November 1936.

40 CHAR 2/267, Churchill to Eden, 31 October 1936.

41 CHAR 2/260/1, Eden to Churchill, 9 November 1936; CHAR 2/260/86, Churchill to Morton, 13 November 1936.

42 Committee of Investigation Appointed by the National Government at Burgos, The Second & Third Reports on the Communist Atrocities Committed in Southern Spain from July to October, 1936 by the Communist Forces of the Madrid Government (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937).

43 Palacio de Liria (PL) Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 March 1937; Arthur Bryant, ‘Preface’, The Second & Third Reports, v–xii (p. ix).

44 Nigel Tangye, Red, White and Spain (London: Rich & Cowan, 1937), 14–15.

45 Stonor, Sherman’s Wife, 69.

46 Eleonora Tennant, Spanish Journey: Personal Experiences of the Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1936).

47 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 15 January 1937.

48 ‘With General Franco’, The Scotsman, 27 January 1937, p. 13. Saroléa later wrote a rebuttal of the Duchess of Atholl’s Searchlight on Spain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938) entitled Daylight on Spain: The Answer to the Duchess of Atholl (London: Hutchinson, 1938).

49 For example, in February 1937 he attended an event in London where a number of ambassadors and MPs were present, such as Henry Page Croft, Lord Phillimore and Alan Lennox-Boyd. See Court Circular, The Times, 27 February 1937, p. 15.

50 ‘MPs and Communism in Spain’, The Times, 30 January 1937, p. 9.

51 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 31 March 1937.

52 AGA 54/6803, Moral to Alba, ‘Informe hecho por Moral’.

53 Hansard, HC Deb, 4 April 1936, vol. 334, cc. 3–16.

54 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 April 1937.

55 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 April 1937. On rebel attitudes towards the foreign press, see Preston, We Saw Spain Die, 157–99.

56 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 8 March 1937.

57 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 8 March 1937.

58 See James Cable, The Royal Navy & the Siege of Bilbao (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1979).

59 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 10 April 1937.

60 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 10 April 1937.

61 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 10 April 1937.

62 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 10 April 1937.

63 TNA WO 374/19022, Frederick Ramón de Bertodano y Wilson, Record of Services, 1915.

64 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 29 April 1937.

65 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 May 1937.

66 Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 325.

67 Serrat y Bonastre, Salamanca, 1936, 90–91.

68 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 21 April 1937.

69 ‘Franco’s Orders to Tories’, Daily Worker, 29 April 1937, p. 1.

70 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 29 April 1937.

71 Southworth, Guernica!, 91.

72 For the most thorough analysis of the denials, see Southworth’s Guernica!

73 The most famous was George Steer, ‘The Tragedy of Guernica’, The Times, 27 April 1937, p. 17. In May, a secretary from the German Embassy at Salamanca visited Guernica and later confessed to a member of staff at the British Embassy at St Jean-de-Luz that the general impression among everyone in Salamanca was that the rebels had bombed Guernica but the ‘Reds’ had also burned parts of the town. See TNA FO 371/21291, W9438/1/41, Chilton to Eden, 10 May 1937. Herr von Goss, the Press Attaché of the German Embassy, also told an International Red Cross delegate ‘of course we bombed Guernica to smithereens’, who then passed this information to Chilton. Chilton told the Foreign Office ‘in the face of such frankness on the part of a German whose word may surely be taken as final, it is harder than ever to understand what good the military authorities at Salamanca expected to do with their verbose and evasive denials’ (TNA FO 371/21292, W9586/1/41).

74 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 4 May 1937.

75 See ‘Rebel Reply on Guernica’, Manchester Guardian, 4 May 1937, p. 6.

76 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 29 April 1937.

77 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 4 May 1937.

78 García, The Truth About Spain!, 39.

79 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 4 May 1937.

80 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 May 1937.

81 Sir Henry Page Croft, a Conservative MP for Bournemouth and member of the Friends of National Spain, chaired the meeting and justified giving Moral the opportunity to speak about the Spanish conflict by claiming he was ‘no foreigner’. Croft introduced him as a British subject that had fought in three wars for the British Empire and said ‘the fact that he succeeded to headship of an ancient family in Spain did not disqualify him from British qualities’. See Address given by the Marquis del Moral to Members of the House of Commons on Wednesday, May 26th, 1937 (London: privately printed, 1937).

82 Southworth, Guernica!, 91.

83 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 4 May 1937.

84 Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Bryant/E64, Bryant to Viola Garvin, 27 July 1938. Moral’s original letter to Bryant is not in the folder, but Bryant quotes these words verbatim. On Bolín’s dismissal, see also García, The Truth About Spain!, 34–40, and Preston, We Saw Spain Die, 195–96.

85 On funding for radio and technical capabilities, see García, The Truth About Spain!, 44–46, 49 & 57–58.

86 See Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica, Salamanca, Incorporados: Delegación Nacional en Londres, boxes 1484–1506.

87 Bolín, The Vital Years, 281.

88 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 29 April 1937. Bolín met Franco on 2 May to discuss the negative press reports in London. According to Bolín, he ‘ventured the view that it was time we had somebody in London, qualified to speak for us in the right quarters’ (cited in Southworth, Guernica!, 435, note 21).

89 AGA 54/7198/9, Olano to Alba, 6 May 1937.

90 See AGA 54/6700/1, Alba to Franco, 9 June 1937.

91 PL Correspondence/M, Moral to Alba, 6 May 1937.

92 AGA 54/7198/9, ‘Para el Gobierno inglés’, n.d.

93 AGA 54/6700/1, Alba to Sangróniz, 1 June 1937.

94 García, The Truth About Spain!, 43.

95 CHAR: Lord Hailsham Papers [HAIL] 1/4/51 contains correspondence between Moral and Hailsham, 1937–1939; CHAR HAIL 1/4/52, Hailsham to Phillimore, 7 July 1939.

96 AGA 54/6700/1, Alba to Sangróniz, 17 June 1937.

97 CHAR HAIL/1/4/51, Moral to Hailsham, 15 July 1937.

98 David Jiménez Torres, Nuestro hombre en Londres: Ramiro de Maeztu y las relaciones anglo-españolas (1898–1936) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2020).

99 Luis G. Martínez del Campo, ‘Weak State, Powerful Culture: The Emergence of Spanish Cultural Diplomacy, 1914–1936’, in European Cultural Diplomacy and the Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, ed. Benjamin G. Martin & Elizabeth Marie Piller, Contemporary European History, 30:2 (2021), 198–213.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.