“After the assault was successful, and the last four guards had surrendered, and he had shot them against the wall, and we had drunk coffee at the café that always opened earliest in the morning by the corner from which the early bus left, he proceeded to the organization of the plaza. Carts were piled exactly as for a capea except that the side toward the river was not enclosed. That was left open. Then Pablo ordered the priest to confess the fascists and give them the necessary sacraments.”

“Where was this done?”

 “In the Ayuntamiento, as I said. There was a great crowd outside and while this was going on inside with the priest, there was some levity outside and shouting of obscenities, but most of the people were very serious and respectful. Those who made jokes were those who were already drunk from the celebration of the taking of the barracks and there were useless characters who would have been drunk at any time.

“While the priest was engaged in these duties, Pablo organized those in the plaza into two lines. He placed them in two lines as you would place men for a rope pulling contest, or as they stand in a city to watch the ending of a bicycle road race with just room for the cyclists to pass between, or as men stood to allow the passage of a holy image in a procession. Two meters was left between the lines and they extended from the door of the Ayuntamiento clear across the plaza to the edge of the cliff. So that, from the doorway of the Ayuntamiento, looking across the plaza, one coming out would see two solid lines of people waiting.

“They were armed with flails such as are used to beat out the grain and they were a good flail’s length apart. All did not have flails, as enough flails could not be obtained. But most had flails obtained from the store of Don Guillermo Martín, who was a fascist and sold all sorts of agricultural implements. And those who did not have flails had heavy herdsman’s clubs, or ox-goads, and some had wooden pitchforks; those with wooden tines that are used to fork the chaff and straw into the air after the flailing. Some had sickles and reaping hooks but these Pablo placed at the far end where the lines reached the edge of the cliff.

 “These lines were quiet and it was a clear day, as today is clear, and there were clouds high in the sky, as there are now, and the plaza was not yet dusty for there had been a heavy dew in the night, and the trees cast a shade over the men in the lines and you could hear the water running from the brass pipe in the mouth of the lion and falling into the bowl of the fountain where the women bring the water jars to fill them.

“Only near the Ayuntamiento, where the priest was complying with his duties with the fascists, was there any ribaldry, and that came from those worthless ones who, as I said, were already drunk and were crowded around the windows shouting obscenities and jokes in bad taste in through the iron bars of the windows. Most of the men in the lines were waiting quietly and I heard one say to another,

 ‘Will there be women?’

“And another said, ‘I hope to Christ, no.’

“Then one said, ‘Here is the woman of Pablo. Listen, Pilar. Will there be women?’

“I looked at him and he was a peasant dressed in his Sunday jacket and sweating heavily and I said,

‘No, Joaquín. There are no women. We are not killing the women. Why should we kill their women?’

“And he said, ‘Thanks be to Christ, there are no women and when does it start?’

 And I said, ‘As soon as the priest finishes.’

 ‘And the priest?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him and I saw his face working and the sweat coming down on his forehead.

‘I have never killed a man,’ he said. 

‘Then you will learn,’ the peasant next to him said.

 ‘But I do not think one blow with this will kill a man,’ and he held his flail in both hands and looked at it with doubt.

‘That is the beauty of it,’ another peasant said. ‘There must be many blows.’

‘They have taken Valladolid. They have Avila,’ some one said.

‘I heard that before we came into town.’

 ‘They will never take this town. This town is ours. We have struck ahead of them,’ I said. ‘Pablo is not one to wait for them to strike.’ “ 

‘Pablo is able,’ another said. ‘But in this finishing off of the civiles he was egoistic. Don’t you think so, Pilar?’  

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But now all are participating in this.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is well organized. But why do we not hear more news of the movement?’

 ‘Pablo cut the telephone wires before the assault on the barracks. They are not yet repaired.’

 ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It is for this we hear nothing. I had my news from the roadmender’s station early this morning.’ “

 ‘Why is this done thus, Pilar?’ he said to me.

‘To save bullets,’ I said. ‘And that each man should have his share in the responsibility.’

 ‘That it should start then. That it should start.’ And I looked at him and saw that he was crying.

 ‘Why are you crying, Joaquín?’ I asked him. ‘This is not to cry about.’ “

 ‘I cannot help it, Pilar,’ he said. ‘I have never killed any one.’

“If you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing. And on this day most of the men in the double line across the plaza wore the clothes in which they worked in the fields, having come into town hurriedly, but some, not knowing how one should dress for the first day of a movement, wore their clothes for Sundays or holidays, and these, seeing that the others, including those who had attacked the barracks, wore their oldest clothes, were ashamed of being wrongly dressed. But they did not like to take off their jackets for fear of losing them, or that they might be stolen by the worthless ones, and so they stood, sweating in the sun and waiting for it to commence.

“Then the wind rose and the dust was now dry in the plaza for the men walking and standing and shuffling had loosened it and it commenced to blow and a man in a dark blue Sunday jacket shouted ‘Agua! Agua!’ and the caretaker of the plaza, whose duty it was to sprinkle the plaza each morning with a hose, came and turned the hose on and commenced to lay the dust at the edge of the plaza, and then toward the center. Then the two lines fell back and let him lay the dust over the center of the plaza; the hose sweeping in wide arcs and the water glistening in the sun and the men leaning on their flails or the clubs or the white wood pitchforks and watching the sweep of the stream of water. And then, when the plaza was nicely moistened and the dust settled, the lines formed up again and a peasant shouted,

‘When do we get the first fascist? When does the first one come out of the box?’

‘Soon,’ Pablo shouted from the door of the Ayuntamiento.

‘Soon the first one comes out.’ His voice was hoarse from shouting in the assault and from the smoke of the barracks.

‘What’s the delay?’ some one asked.

‘They’re still occupied with their sins,’ Pablo shouted.

 ‘Clearly, there are twenty of them,’ a man said. “

 ‘More,’ said another. “ 

‘Among twenty there are many sins to recount.’

 ‘Yes, but I think it’s a trick to gain time. Surely facing such an emergency one could not remember one’s sins except for the biggest.’

 ‘Then have patience. For with more than twenty of them there are enough of the biggest sins to take some time.’

 ‘I have patience,’ said the other.

 ‘But it is better to get it over with. Both for them and for us. It is July and there is much work. We have harvested but we have not threshed. We are not yet in the time of fairs and festivals.’

‘But this will be a fair and festival today,’ another said. ‘The Fair of Liberty and from this day, when these are extinguished, the town and the land are ours.’

 ‘We thresh fascists today,’ said one, ‘and out of the chaff comes the freedom of this pueblo.’

 ‘We must administer it well to deserve it,’ said another.

‘Pilar,’ he said to me, ‘when do we have a meeting for organization?’

 ‘Immediately after this is completed,’ I told him. ‘In the same building of the Ayuntamiento.’

 “I was wearing one of the three-cornered patent leather hats of the guardia civil as a joke and I had put the hammer down on the pistol, holding it with my thumb to lower it as I pulled on the trigger as seemed natural, and the pistol was held in a rope I had around my waist, the long barrel stuck under the rope. And when I put it on the joke seemed very good to me, although afterwards I wished I had taken the holster of the pistol instead of the hat. But one of the men in the line said to me,

‘Pilar, daughter. It seems to me bad taste for thee to wear that hat. Now we have finished with such things as the guardia civil.’

 ‘Then,’ I said, ‘I will take it off.’ And I did.

 ‘Give it to me,’ he said. ‘It should be destroyed.’

“And as we were at the far end of the line where the walk runs along the cliff by the river, he took the hat in his hand and sailed it off over the cliff with the motion a herdsman makes throwing a stone underhand at the bulls to herd them. The hat sailed far out into space and we could see it smaller and smaller, the patent leather shining in the clear air, sailing down to the river. I looked back over the square and at all the windows and all the balconies there were people crowded and there was the double line of men across the square to the doorway of the Ayuntamiento and the crowd swarmed outside against the windows of that building and there was the noise of many people talking, talking, and then I heard a shout and some one said

‘Here comes the first one,’ and it was Don Benito Garcia, the Mayor, and he came out bareheaded walking slowly from the door and down the porch and nothing happened; and he walked between the line of men with the flails and nothing happened. He passed two men, four men, eight men, ten men and nothing happened and he was walking between that line of men, his head up, his fat face gray, his eyes looking ahead and then flickering from side to side and walking steadily. And nothing happened.

“From a balcony some one cried out,

 ‘Qué pasa, cobardes? What is the matter, cowards?’ and still Don Benito walked along between the men and nothing happened. Then I saw a man three men down from where I was standing and his face was working and he was biting his lips and his hands were white on his flail. I saw him looking toward Don Benito, watching him come on. And still nothing happened. Then, just before Don Benito came abreast of this man, the man raised his flail high so that it struck the man beside him and smashed a blow at Don Benito that hit him on the side of the head and Don Benito looked at him and the man struck again and shouted,

‘That for you, cabron,’ and the blow hit Don Benito in the face and he raised his hands to his face and they beat him until he fell and the man who had struck him first called to others to help him and he pulled on the collar of Don Benito’s shirt and others took hold of his arms and with his face in the dust of the plaza, they dragged him over the walk to the edge of the cliff and threw him over and into the river.”

From “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway was a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War. He witnessed atrocities on both sides of the conflict, the cruelty of brother against brother.   In his book The Spanish Civil War, Hugh Thomas describes the climate of violence: “Violence provoked new brutality, the news of evil in one village causing a new crime in the next. In Baena, for example, near Córdoba, the revolutionaries killed 92 people of the Right. The repression after the right-wing recovery of the town accounted for about 700.”  Franco’s repression—blue terror—accounted for 200,000 deaths. It was a political genocide planned and orchestrated by the military authorities to sow fear. In the Republican zone, uncontrolled militia groups, especially anarchists, carried out the red terror. They murdered about 60,000 people. The weak government of the republic tried to contain them and even punished some of them.

Featured image: Picasso’s Weeping Woman