Life in Malaga goes on calmly enough on the surface. There are, of course, the burned houses and the flags, and one sees fewer well-dressed people than in ordinary times. Only foreigners wear a tie, for ties are now the sign that one is a ╥senorito.╙ The letters U.G.T., C.N.T., U.H.P., F.A.I., and a good many more denoting the various parties are painted on walls, on cars and lorries, on trees, on any surface that will take them. One cannot buy a melon in the market-place that has not got some initials scratched on it. There are also a good many militia about, dressed in their new uniforms of blue cotton overalls with red armlets.
One is no longer aware of the feeling of strain that was so marked all this spring and summer, for the tension has been relaxed by the victory of one party: on the other hand there is a certain inquietude due to the nearness of the front, to the delay in taking Granada, and to the spy mania, which since the discovery of one or two aerials has become very general. Then ╤ a great novelty in Spain ╤ there are no police to be seen; they are the shock troops of the Government, and are all at the front.
But in fact things are far from being normal. The Civil Governor has been away nearly a week in Madrid. Cut off from the rest of Spain except for a narrow passage along the east coast, Malaga is acquiring a definitely revolutionary government. I mentioned last week the various committees that manage the supply of food, equip columns, and so on, and I compared them with the juntas of the Napoleonic and Carlist wars which performed exactly the same functions.
THE COMMITTEE SYSTEM
They are the forms which come into existence in Spain when popular feeling, impatient of corrupt and incompetent bureaucratic methods, demands some outlet in action. But there is one committee new to Spain ╤ the Committee of Public Health and Safety ╤ which came into existence on the day on which the Governor left the city, the 12th of this month. It is the Spanish equivalent of the Russian Cheka.
Here is a brief description of the workings of the committees in general. At the head is the Comite de Enlace, or Union, which decides the general policy. It is composed of twenty members, one of whom is the Governor, who seems otherwise to have only nominal powers, and it supervises all the other committees, those of Supply, of Labour, or Transport, of War, of Public Health and Safety, and so on. All the various parties of the Left, from Republicans to Anarchists, sit on these committees, and my impression of their work is that they are remarkably efficient. The ordinary machinery of Spanish local government could never have done half as much.
THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY
The Committee of Public Health and Safety investigates charges of hostility to the regime, provides safe conducts, organises search parties for wanted people, and shoots them. In five days it shot well over a hundred people in Malaga alone. To begin with it shot some thirty prisoners who were kept on a ship in the harbour. Some of these were senior police officers who refused to join the Government; others were prominent people of the Right; one was a marquesa caught using a private transmitting set. They were taken to a cemetery and shot. Then came the people who were dragged out of their houses at night, put in cars, driven off to some quiet road, and killed there. Their only crime as a rule was affiliation to the Ceda, the Right Catholic party, or their having offended some workman or other. Some of these people have been killed with shocking violence. One I saw had his head bashed in; another who had not died at the first volley had had his throat cut; others had their fingers, ears, or noses sliced off, after death, of course; they are cut off to be taken away as trophies.
The men who do this belong to the F.A.I., the anarchist organisation which is so extended in Barcelona and Saragossa and also provides the shock troops and gunmen for the Fascist party, Falange Espanola. They buy them by giving them work at good wages, with extra payment for assassinations, and as the membership of the Falange is secret they often remain at the same time both Fascists and anarchists.
But there has been a great change in the last few days. The anarchist bands who were dragging harmless people out of their houses after midnight and shooting them have been put down. Some have been shot, and militia patrol the streets and have orders to fire on any cars with armed men in them whom they see about after midnight. No one can be arrested and no house searched without a warrant signed by the Governor. The Committee of Public Safety have advisory powers only.
Another change is that red flags have been forbidden, and, except in some of the poorer quarters, the only colours now to be seen are the Republican. The explanation of this is that there has been a tightening up of the ╥Popular Front╙ in Madrid. The Governor of Malaga, who had just returned from a conference there, told me that an agreement had been arrived at between the Republican parties and the Socialist and Communist parties, with all their affiliated bodies, by which any form of Communism or dictatorship of the proletariat was entirely ruled out.
As soon as the war was over a Government would be formed of the Republican and Socialist parties, a Government much of the Left, of course, but not unfavourable to the middle classes, who are to a considerable extent supporting the Government. It is thought that the Syndicalists (especially the more conservative C.N.T.) would not oppose such an arrangement, and the conversations I have had with Syndicalist leaders in Malaga would seem to bear this out. What they would fight would be any increased form of centralisation or any dictatorship.
WIDESPREAD TREACHERY
Another of the most hateful things in this war has been the treachery. One is taken back at once to some of the worst periods of the Middle Ages. Huelva, after declaring for the Government, was lost to them by the treachery of the Civil Guard. Elsewhere a colonel of the same corps whose fidelity was suspected is reported to have gone down on his knees and sworn allegiance to the Government. Sent out in charge of a column, he turned on his own militia, took them prisoners, and went over to the enemy. On the other side many of the rebel troops would desert if they could. There are spies everywhere: in the rebel country none of the working classes can be trusted; here many of the public functionaries are of doubtful loyalty.
It seems hardly worth while, in the shambles that Spain is becoming, to deny any stories of atrocities. Yet I would like to say that reports published in the English papers of nuns led about naked in the streets of Malaga are the purest invention; on the contrary, they were taken either to the Town Hall for safety or to their own houses and were treated with perfect respect throughout. Sisters of Charity still go about the streets in their uniforms. Those killed are killed brutally but quickly; the truth by itself, without ornaments, is bad enough.
LYNCHING AFTER AIR RAID
Yesterday some bombs were dropped in Malaga. A tank of oil and a smaller supply of petrol were set on fire, making a prodigious blaze, but other bombs that fell on a popular quarter killed about forty people and wounded a hundred and fifty, mostly women and children. If Germans had been living all over London during the last war and if the whole of the police and almost every soldier had been at the front I think there might have been some lynchings after air raids.
And, in fact, a mob marched that evening to the prison, took out forty-five prisoners, and shot them. Those who point to atrocities of this sort on the Government side often forget the provocation and the circumstances. When soldiers and police have to go to the front because other soldiers and police have rebelled, who is left to keep order among an enraged population?
