They got five rounds rapid from two Mausers, then more from the loaded weapons handed to Vince and Cal by the athletes, which first disrupted the reloading, then drove them away from the weapons in a continuous hail of bullets, two of them clearly taking lead and spinning away, certainly wounded, possibly on the way to being dead.
Whatever else happened, the guns had not been used on the crowds in the plaza. They were now thinning as their leaders exercised late control and sought to get them under cover, safe from the remains of those they had chased, now behind stout walls, closed gates and regrouping.
‘Vince, you stay here and keep those bastards honest.’
‘We’ll need more ammo, guv.’
‘I’ll get it sent up.’
‘See if any bugger has a sniper rifle too,’ Vince croaked. ‘In fact, a proper sniper would be ace.’
Cal called to the youngsters, not easy with Florencia seeking to drag him away again. ‘Stay with him and make sure he has a loaded rifle at all times. Anything else, Vince?’
‘Order me up a pint of draught bitter, guv, I’m sick of bleedin’ wine.’
It was a relief to get off the roof — the temperature was now in the nineties — and into the shade of the stairway; only then did Cal realise how dry was his own throat, but a mouth turning to something like leather is the first thing that happens in combat and he was quick to put his whole head under a landing tap.
Once he reached the doorway to the plaza, he was wise enough to stop and have a good look before proceeding, though he had to drag Florencia back from just exposing herself; the gates and walls of the barracks were in range and plain sight.
‘Why worry? They are beaten.’
‘They are behind stone walls, the best soldiers have survived and you don’t take chances, ever.’ The air expelled from her heaving chest was immediate and derogatory, as was his anger, manifested in him grabbing and shaking her. ‘Why is it all you Spaniards want to martyr yourselves? I’m sick of it. Now, do as I do or as I say, or go and find someone else to bury you.’
‘Querido.’
The Spanish word for ‘darling’ he knew only too well; it was the one Florencia always employed when patently in the wrong and always expressed with warmth. She then smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek, before walking right out of the door and into the exposed plaza without looking.
The battle, as recounted later in all its confusion, soon became fluid and not always decisive; the army had a plan to seize strategic buildings as well as dominate the streets and wide avenues, before taking control of the city centre, and that made things harder as it began to take proper shape.
While they succeeded in some of the former — they held the captain general’s headquarters and the area surrounding it — the latter was proving difficult and that led to them being trapped in places like the main telephone exchange, previously occupied and closed down by the government. Unbeknown to Cal, they were also cooped up in some of the big luxury hotels, like the Ritz and the nearby Colon.
Everywhere he went, trailing Juan Luis Laporta, loudspeakers were blaring out news of the progress of the battle, or relaying messages for those not already engaged in a fight where to find one. They rushed from position to position, in one of which Cal witnessed a sight that was doubly cheering, the scattering of the Santiago Cavalry Regiment, one of the elite mounted units of Spain, by the men of the POUM, armed workers all shouting out, he was told, in Catalan and in shades of 1917, that it was time to kill the Cossacks.
At another barricade, the newspaper workers — printers, typesetters, electricians and even some journalists, members of the UGT — had driven out of their buildings the lorries carrying the huge rolls of newsprint required to produce the paper and set them up across a wide boulevard, creating a defence so solid it was impervious even to artillery fire. The workers had another weapon: a fellow feeling for those soldiers reluctant in their efforts, fighting from fear of their officers, not from conviction.
If they could get to them, and they often did, brave women especially, persuading men from their own social class to down their weapons and join the Republican cause was not only successful, it was often decisive. It one case a group of anarchists even persuaded the artillerymen in charge of two 75 mm Schneider cannon to turn their fire on their own comrades.
Finally the commanders of the Civil Guard, no doubt with an eye on the way matters were progressing, threw in their lot with the workers, emerging from their barracks to parade down the wide avenue of Las Ramblas, before a cheering crowd, as well as Lluis Companys, the head of the regional Catalan government, before proceeding to become engaged in the actual fighting.
News also arrived that at the Castle of Montjuic, a formidable mediaeval stronghold which overlooked the city, the soldiers had refused to obey their officers; instead they had shot them and armed the workers. At the airport, an officer sympathetic to the Republic had refused to join the uprising and instead sent his planes to bomb the rebels.
Now it was the turn of the workers to go on the outright offensive and attack the military barricades with that same suicidal bravery — or was it foolhardiness? — Cal had witnessed the day before at the Capitania Maritima.
But it was not just bare flesh they employed; those armoured trucks, ungainly as they looked in their newly acquired sheet plating, were sent towards the hastily erected obstacles, crashing through them, driven by men who did not care if they survived the assault, and many did not.
By the end of the day, the battle, while not over, was well on the way to being won, with the various flags of the numerous workers’ organisations flying all over the city centre, while at the same time some of the good news began to be disseminated to back up the action of the eight-hundred-strong and highly professional Civil Guard.
Now the fight was on to take the buildings into which the rebellious soldiers and their Falangist allies, unable to get back to their now-besieged barracks, had taken refuge.
CHAPTER SIX
One very important building was the telephone exchange, and taking that, delegated to Laporta, was to be an operation wholly carried out by the anarchists of the CNT-FAI, though he accepted Cal, Vince and their party, now back together as one unit, as honorary members; after all, each had been issued with a black and red armband to confirm their status.
Offered aid from the Civil Guard, including trained marksmen, he declined; let them do their work elsewhere. Whatever the man’s faults, an inability to learn was not apparently amongst them. Without any acknowledgement to the man who had berated him the day before, he vetoed any attempt by his followers for an immediate mass charge on the place.
Instead, he elected to wait until the artillery taken earlier in the day became available to subdue the defence in what was another formidable stone building — weapons presently being deployed against the army headquarters, seeking to get General Goded to surrender. Added to that, the exchange was held in the most part by the zealots of the Falange; they would not sell their lives cheaply, and knowing the fate that most likely awaited them, surrender was out of the question.
The event was not without comedy: first, Laporta had been required to see off the consul of the USA, who insisted that damage to the building was out of the question; it was American property, belonging to the communications giant, ITT, who had bought the Spanish telephone system from a previous government. Pompous and emotional, he was seen off with a waved pistol and much jeering.