Coup Recouped

Spain's mid-August heat is dry, oppressive. Business, traffic and government move slowly. Public officials leave Madrid for a rest, as did President Niceto Alcala Zamora last week. But heat meant nothing to a veteran of Moroccan campaigns, swart General Jose Sanjurjo,* good friend of the late Dictator Primo De Rivera and of exiled King Alfonso, whom he faintly, fatly resembles. "Just the time for a coup d'etat," he chuckled to himself as he sped south from Madrid one torrid night. Next day Sevillanos on their way to lunch heard the clatter of hoofs, the tramp of feet, much blowing of bugles in the broad Plaza de Espana. There they found General Sanjurjo on horseback before the city hall. Behind him was a column of Civil Guards, infantry and medical corps. From his pocket the general withdrew a piece of paper, unfolded it, read: "I, Jose Sanjurjo, general in the Spanish Army, constitute myself captain-general of Andalusia and order all previous dispositions concerning the public order superseded. I also declare the present local authorities without jurisdiction. Viva Espana!" An hour later Seville was in General Sanjurjo's hands. Arrested and clapped into the military barracks were Governor Valera Valverde, the mayor, the chief of police and seven councilmen. Lieut.-Colonel Marquis de Sauceda was named Governor of Seville. From Algeciras and from Jerez de la Frontera, where all Spain's sherry is made, came mutinying troops to join the rebels. At Cartagena a naval garrison mutinied. In Granada and Malaga revolutionary fervor ran high. General Sanjurjo cut all telegraph & telephone wires north of Seville. The general, who had escorted Queen Victoria from Spain after last year's revolution, announced that his coup was "purely republican." Few believed him.

Meanwhile in Madrid a crowd of mutinous soldiers set out from their barracks for the post office and war office. When they neared the war office from all sides appeared truckloads of police, shooting as they came. The rebel lines wavered, broke. The soldiers ran for cover, shooting as they ran. Seven fell. Police took 200 prisoners, including eight men found in a room near the war office where they said they had met to play poker. A doctor, passing in a taxicab, was drilled through the head. Within four hours the uprising was over, Madrid was quiet under martial law.

From Madrid two infantry regiments, artillery and bombing planes started for Seville. General Sanjurjo sent twelve soldiers with a trainload of dvnamite to blow up the bridge at Lora del Rio. These fell captive to a squad of Civil Guards from Cordoba. By nightfall General Sanjurjo was in a panic. Reinforcements from the south had not arrived. Emissaries he sent to nearby towns were caught and jailed. At midnight he summoned General Gonzales y Gonzales, delivered his command to him. Then he collected nine loyal lieutenants including his son, piled them into two automobiles, fled toward the Portuguese frontier. At daybreak in Huelva a sleepy police mannamed Joaquin Segovia was stopped by two cars, asked the way to Portugal. Officer Segovia raised his rifle. Without more ado General Sanjurjo hopped out of the first car, shook the policeman by the hand. "I congratulate you," said he. "With only a rifle you forced us to surrender." While General Sanjurjo was being taken to Madrid for trial by the Supreme Court, Premier Manuel Azana began retiring all officers suspected of complicity in the revolt. In frontier towns scores of escaping monarchists were arrested. The Marquis de Festival, at whose Seville house General Sanjurjo made his headquarters, was chased toward Gibraltar by Civil Guards. As the pursuers' car drew up alongside his car he jammed on the brakes, jumped out, waded into the Strait and began swimming. Later a motorboat picked him up, still swimming toward Africa. In Seville mobs burned monarchists' homes, freed Communists and Syndicalists from jail, mobbed royalist newspaper offices. As prisoners left the jail, others-- participants in the revolt--went in. Republican demonstrations were staged in Cordoba, Valencia, Santander, Barcelona. In Madrid the conservative papers A. B. C., Informaciones, El Debate and Nacion were suspended. Casualties of the revolt: 1,000 arrested, 90 wounded, ten killed, including one Nicanor Puerto who committed suicide. The Government promised General Sanjurjo would not be executed "unless the law left no alternative." Disloyal Civil Guards were stripped of their epaulets. President Alcala Zamora distributed 500,000 pesetas in rewards to the republic's heroes. In Konigswart, Czechoslovakia, onetime King Alfonso denied he had any hand in the revolt, expressed grief over the bloodshed. His third son, Prince Juan Carlos, who was reported to have been the royalists' choice for King, was in a Ceylon hospital with malaria he had caught while cruising as a midshipman on the British cruiser Enterprise. From Mexico City Spanish Ambassador Alvarez del Vayo called Minister of Public Works Indalecio Prieto by transatlantic telephone. "Why are you sad?" he asked. "Is the revolution succeeding?" Replied Minister Prieto: "I am sad because this call is costing 15 pesetas a minute. The Republic is stronger than ever. Adios."

*Pronounced "San-hhout-hho."This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.