The Experiences of British Holidaymakers and Expatriate Residents in Pre-Civil War Spain

Brian Shelmerdine

A poster world of gamboge and cerulean blue.1

A hotbed of political unrest, strikes and increased expenses.2

Introduction

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the vast majority of the British public regarded Spain as remote and insignificant, her glory a feature of the past. Spanish politics were comic and incomprehensible for most. Informed by schooling which con- centrated on historic rivalries, by juvenile literature which gloried in and emphasized those rivalries, and by a British and a Hollywood film industry which saw profit in further repeating that popular image, it is perhaps not surprising that for ‘many people . . . Spain [was] a rather romantic country, far away, where funny things happen to funny people.’3 Of his wanderings through Spain during the months leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War, the poet and author Laurie Lee later recalled:

I was in a country of which I knew nothing . . . My small country school, always generous with its information as to the exports of Queensland and the fate of Jenkins’ ear, had provided me with nothing more tangible or useful about Spain than that Seville had a barber, and Barcelona nuts.4 Spain, then, for the majority of Britons was distant and un- important, a country which at best was non-threatening by virtue of its reduced circumstances. Typically, the Daily Mail gossip columnist Charles Graves, introducing an account of his journey through Spain during 1935, felt able to declare that ‘the Englishman’s attitude towards Spain [is] dictated by the realisa-

European History Quarterly Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol. 32(3), 367–390. [0265-6914(200207)32:3;367–390;026061] 368 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 tion that, though once our equal and superior . . . she has now come down in the world . . . a great lady in reduced circumstances’.5 Such attitudes go some way towards explaining the general indifference of the British public towards events in Spain during the conflict of 1936–39. Despite different interpretations of the issue, in many ways both the mainstream Left and the Tory Right propagated a consensus which regarded Spain as no direct concern of Britain. Although undoubtedly the war aroused passions across the political spectrum and induced action from substantial sections of society, for most the purchase of a milk token was the limit of their involvement. Returning to Britain from Catalonia in the summer of 1938, one commentator noted with despair that the people she met were only slightly more interested in the bombing of Barcelona than in the bombing of Canton, and then only on the basis that ‘Spain was nearer than China’ and ‘Spaniards while only just removed from negroes, were Euro- peans’.6 However, there was a significant minority of British subjects for whom 1930s Spain was not so distant. During the first three decades of the century the peninsula had attracted a growing number of travellers, and, in the words of one travel guide, had been increasingly ‘“discovered” by holidaymakers from England and America’.7 Further contact was made through various British enterprises in Spain which provided employment to numbers of engineers and managers, and through the colonies of retired expatriates to which the country was host. At least, for this band of visitors and residents it would seem that there existed the opportunity to overcome cultural ignorance and to redress stereotypical preconceptions. It is the intention here, developing a theme opened up in the mid-1990s by Tom Buchanan and sub- sequently expanded by John K. Walton, to examine the expectations and experiences of two of these groups — holidaymakers and expatriates — and to offer some further suggestions as to how their responses contributed to shaping British attitudes during the Civil War: most particularly, or at least most effectively, during the conflict’s early months.8 Buchanan’s focus was directed particularly at how British commentators and politicians from across the political spectrum referred to a common stock of Spanish ‘national’ images, in order to offer very different interpretations of the conflict. Taking up the theme, Walton offered an intro- Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 369 ductory exploration of the expectations carried by British visitors to Spain in the years before the war. It is this latter aspect of the question which is developed here. Although this article is primarily concerned with the experiences of holidaymakers and expatriate residents, some reference to the literature of travellers is also necesary since their accounts provide the most abundant source of material; however, such reference has been kept to a minimum and used only in context. Expatriates have been subdivided into two groups: the leisured British nationals who sought a warmer climate for the winter, and those whose employment located them in Spain. The two groups had shared experiences but their interpretations of some issues varied, at least before the outbreak of war. Evidence gleaned from contemporary accounts, travelogues, guidebooks and newspaper and magazine articles suggests the common themes to which most observers subscribed. However, while many of the expatriate residents, travellers and writers who lived in and visited Spain during this period put on paper the impressions that they had formed during their time there, the view of Spain gained by the much greater number of holidaymakers was largely restricted to discussion with immediate friends and family and inevitably involves some degree of speculation. As will become evident, impressions made by holidaymakers were more preva- lent.

By the turn of the century, a small number of more adventurous British travellers had already added Spain to their list of destinations, and following the First World War this number had risen. Although foreign travel undoubtedly felt the impact of the De- pression,9 already as the 1920s gave way to the 1930s ‘Blackpool and Brighton . . . ceased to suffice’ for some Britons. As the decade advanced, Spain increasingly became a destination for a new breed of ‘sightseers, people who travel[led] with no motive but to peer about them’.10 In the north of the country, the Santander coast and the Basque resort of San Sebastián benefited from relatively easy access and from a close proximity to the firmly established French resort of Biarritz. In the south, Seville witnessed greater numbers of 370 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3

British visitors, and on the Mediterranean coast the ‘Spanish Riviera’ from Málaga to Almería was beginning to attract increased attention.11 By the mid-1930s with what proved to be somewhat unfortunate timing, one enterprising British couple, Nancy and Archie Johnstone, had opened a hotel at Tossa de Mar on the Catalan coast and reported being overwhelmed with bookings.12 In the south, a British presence had been evident longer in a number of holiday enterprises with British-owned pensions in Málaga and Granada, and British-owned luxury hotels in Algeciras and Ronda. Similarly, among the accommodation listed in the 1929 Blue Guide to Southern Spain and Portugal were such comforting names as Miss Laird’s in Granada and the very English Spragg’s and Slee’s pensions in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. As this guide advised, several tourist agencies were now offering ‘tours to suit all purses’ on the Iberian Peninsula.13 While the upper middle-class profile which delineated earlier visitors had by this time begun to be diluted by the increasing number of relatively low-cost tour holidays, the extent of this process should not be exaggerated. For example, one London- based coach company, Motorways Ltd, took advantage of the country’s improved road network and by 1929 was offering 32- day package tours of Spain. While these tours took place every three to four weeks from October through to April, the cost of an ‘all inclusive, first-class throughout’ trip was a limiting 98 guineas (£102/18s or £102.90) per head.14 Time and money restrictions placed tours such as these beyond the majority. However, other more affordable holidays were also becoming available. Travel guides advised prospective holidaymakers on how to spend a fortnight in Spain for only £10, while in 1932, two-thirds of the 2000 passengers who embarked on one of the Workers Travel Association’s (WTA) more exotic holidays, two weeks aboard the cruise-ship Esperance Bay, did so for £12.15 Yet even at £10 or £12, the uptake of such holidays would have been limited to reasonably affluent middle-class holidaymakers, a class which was predominantly conservative in attitude and Conservative in political leaning. Thus the numbers of all these holidaymakers must be kept in perspective. For example, it is helpful to compare the 1205 British nationals who registered in the top hotels of San Sebastián during 1933 with the 190,000 rail tickets collected from trippers to Blackpool during one August week in 1931.16 While the Spanish resort’s statistics do not Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 371 include those visitors who stayed in cheaper accommodation, neither do the Blackpool figures include the many thousands who would have travelled there by means other than the railway. However, with these caveats the fact remains that during the 1930s, holidays abroad were an increasing option for the moderately wealthy.17 At this time, the most established holiday resorts in Spain were those of the Biscayan coast, a process well documented by Walton.18 San Sebastián and El Sardinero, the seaside suburb of Santander, had long been fashionable seaside destinations, thriving not on the spending power of foreign visitors but rather on a domestic demand for the more bracing atmosphere of the northern Atlantic coast. Although these resorts predominantly served the indigenous population, they were increasingly attract- ing visitors from beyond the borders of Spain. Addressing their wider market, British travel guides observed that visitors to the Basque country arrived not only by Rolls Royce but also by Austin Seven. If some journeyed ‘de luxe in the Sud-Express’, others ‘came down third-class from Paris’. It was stressed that San Sebastián was not ‘merely the haunt of the indolent and wealthy. Nearer to London than any other large town in Spain, it [could] welcome the humblest visitor’, although English speaking visitors were noted as most usually ‘frequenting the listed Deluxe and First Category hotels.’19 Even second-class hotels were deemed acceptable to those ‘unexacting travellers prepared for Spanish dishes and cooking’.20 In a 1935 travel guide, Sydney Clark recommended San Sebastián as ‘a little Rio’ with its ‘cres- cent beach, giant waves, and mountains’.21 Six years previously, Charles Freeston had similarly saluted San Sebastián and El Sardinero, praising the hotels and facilities of both and making particularly favourable comment on the telephone service. Access in both towns to a golf course (deemed an essential pre- requisite for English and American travellers), lawn tennis courts and a polo club all added to the enjoyment of wealthier visitors such as Freeston.22 Charles Graves, brother of the author and poet Robert Graves, also applauded the geographical and archi- tectural setting of San Sebastián, although his observations of Santander and neighbouring El Sardinero were far less complimentary — in no small part because of the inaccessibility of the golf course. However, for Graves the new popularity of the Cantabrian coast with British holidaymakers was evidenced 372 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 in Spanish restaurants where customers were entertained by ‘dreamy tangos’ transmitted by the BBC.23 Spain was deliberately courting this popularity. By 1934, San Sebastián’s advertising committee was spending almost as much on advertising in Britain as in neighbouring France, while according to Graves the Republic was spending over £100,000 a year in other parts of Spain on the chain of paradores or state hotels, with the specific purpose of encouraging foreign visitors.24 In spite of the unrest following the election of the Popular Front government in February 1936, some parts of Spain continued to attract British travellers and holidaymakers right up to the rebellion in July. Indeed, in the spring of 1936, the Royal Automobile Club’s advice against travel in Spain was dismissed by the British chargé d’affaires in Madrid.25 Even as news of the rebellion in Morocco on 17–18 July was filtering through, two WTA groups were departing for Barcelona and San Sebastián, and as early as September 1936 the Canary Islands (seized and secured immediately by the rebels) were again considered a safe enough destination for the passengers of the Esperance Bay. Apparently their ‘Ringside Seats at a Revolution’, with tales of the ‘shootings of Communists and . . . of machine gun nests in the tops of build- ings’, merely added to the excitement of their itinerary.26 However, despite the increased numbers visiting Spain between 1931 and 1936, there is little evidence of their experience altering entrenched attitudes. WTA holidaymakers and their like displayed little obvious regard for their organization’s lofty aims of ‘destroying the myths that divide us from other lands’.27 Equally, there is little to suggest that holidaymakers were constrained by political considerations. For example, at a time when German involvement in Spain was well known, guidebooks complacently reassured those intending to holiday in Germany that ‘the Germans’ love of uniforms . . . has nothing to do with the militarism of old times’ and that of more concern was the fact that ‘they hardly play cricket at all’.28 As visitors undoubtedly took such preconceived notions of the people and the countries they visited with them, along with typical holiday expectations, it is perhaps not surprising that their visits did little to correct established, stereotypical views or challenge political attitudes. The majority of those holidaymakers who were beginning to discover Spain and other European destinations through organizations such as the WTA were most probably concerned Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 373 only with having a good time in a more exotic location. Indeed, when Charles Graves’ path crossed that of one group of east London holidaymakers in San Sebastián he felt compelled to comment disparagingly on their loud, drunken state as they staggered through the streets singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. To Graves, who was travelling in his chaffeur-driven Rolls Royce Corniche, such ‘a bunch of really shocking English trippers’ were an unexpected embarrassment.29 The Irish novelist Kate O’Brien also noted with sinking heart the ‘babble of excited English speech’ in Santander, as ‘yet another batch of hard-up and innocent trippers [had] been dumped on to the dripping wet Paseo de Pereda’. However, O’Brien’s despair was aroused more by pity than embarrassment. For her these ‘thirteen-day’ holiday-makers were ‘asking for admission into the poster world . . . of gamboge and cerulean blue, of singing and lounging and carnations in the mouth’ and were likely to be disillusioned.30 Away from the popular northern coast, holidaymakers were less likely to be disappointed by inclement weather and more likely to find their expectations of the ‘poster world’ rewarded, especially those who were fortunate and wealthy enough to enjoy months rather than weeks away holidaying. However, the ‘holiday behaviour’ of visitors was often observed to be more consistent than the climate. As a British hotelier in Spain rather cuttingly remarked of some of her guests: ‘It is extraordinary how perfectly normal people, holding very often jobs that show they must be intelligent at times, seem very stupid when they are on holiday.’ The recorded comments of some of her guests regard- ing Spanish temperament, character and customs serve only to indicate the cultural chasm which a few weeks or even months in Spain were unlikely to dent. Apparently, when holidaymakers did mix with the local people they usually ‘came to see the funny natives’, while the locals in their turn ‘came to look at the comic foreigners’.31 Reference by holidaymakers to popular guidebooks and travelogues served only to endorse such stereotypical views. Typically, Lawrence Wolfe’s contribution to Fodor’s 1936 guide opened with the recognition that for the average Englishman, the very name Spain was no more than ‘the first link in a chain of ideas comprising bull-fights, castanets, mantillas and onions’.32 It would seem fair to assume that the baggage of expectations carried by holidaymakers would have been informed in part by 374 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 the travel literature available. The very consistency in that literature of certain views of Spain, the ‘Spanish character’ and Spanish customs provides a distinct picture of what those expectations were, while the volume of literature and the appar- ent demand for it reinforces the view that holidaymakers would have formed at least a part of its interested readership. (For example, Aldor’s 1937 guide sold out within two weeks of publication and Nina Murdoch’s 1935 travelogue went to two reprints the same year.) The correspondence list of travel writer Michael Mason, including ‘country doctors, widowed ladies in the provinces and retired civil servants’, also serves to reinforce the argument that readers of travel literature, and implicitly holidaymakers, would have been overridingly conservative in outlook.33 Such readers could relate effortlessly to a subtext, evident in many guides and travel accounts, which praised the achieve- ments and stability brought about during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–30), while implying that a deterioration in standards was the consequence of subsequent weak republican government (1931–36). That the Republic had been established following the forced departure of an essentially anglophile king simply reinforced the message. An improved road network, a chain of government-financed hotels, a string of effective tourist information offices, public telephone boxes and the installation of water closets all established under Rivera’s rule were deemed essential considerations for British visitors. Although writers sometimes announced their intention to correct stereotypical expectations of Spain, most in fact resorted to some amused reference to them. Still others made no attempt to see beyond such notions. Those who read of the splendours of Spanish heritage, of the alcázars and cathedrals, the Prado and the Alhambra, were also frequently treated to a catalogue of references to ‘old Spanish customs’ which simply endorsed stereotypical notions of Spanish life and character. Charles Graves, for example had a clear itinerary and distinct preconceptions. Planning to visit ‘the Prado, the Escorial, the caves of Alta Mira [sic] and the wondrous city of Santiago’, it was the sight of ‘women with a week’s washing on their head’ and policemen ‘directing traffic as they nonchalantly smoked cigarettes’ which were sufficient to remind him of how far he had travelled from the familiar streets of London.34 Certain themes recur throughout the literature. Would-be Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 375 travellers were warned of the presence and persistence of beggars, boot-blacks, eager guides and hopeful vendors of lottery tickets. Spaniards, observed Bernard Newman in 1936, would ‘bet on anything’, for ‘nowhere in Europe [was] the cult of something for nothing so strongly developed as in Spain’.35 That a football journal should be entitled ‘Free Kick’ had induced similar sardonic comment from Jan and Cora Gordon in 1922.36 The increase in the number of street beggars was, for some writers during the 1930s, just one more proof of the failings of the Republic. They noted that, under Rivera’s dictatorship, such a nuisance had been curbed. Inevitably all writers, those of guidebooks and travelogues, turned their attention to the bullfight. The majority railed against its cruelty, most particularly as it resulted in the deaths of so many horses, though here some Rivera apolo- gists praised the introduction of compulsory protective padding during the dictator’s regime. However, most writers tempered connotations of cruelty by recognizing the courage and skill of the matadors and the spectacle and tradition of the event. For example, one guidebook writer concluded of the bullfight that ‘it is wonderful, if one can harden one’s heart and freeze all pity for the beasts, to watch the toreros at their graceful, clever, cruel, bloody game’.37 Travellers were also consistent in praising Spanish hospitality. As more than one travel book noted, traffic policemen were likely to forgo their immediate duties in order to help the tourist, and in the hotels the chambermaids, waiters and porters, and not least the proprietor, would ‘take a kindly interest in their welfare’.38 Against this, would-be tourists were warned of ‘Spanish dila- toriness’ and tendency to the cult of mañana. Lost baggage was one likely consequence of an inherent Spanish apathy, trains fail- ing to run to timetable another. Although many writers declared that, contrary to popular belief Spaniards were not lazy, they inevitably contradicted themselves. Bilbao, one guidebook observed, was notable because ‘there a large number of Spaniards actually work’. For Charles Graves, displaying his Daily Mail credentials and English arrogance, Spaniards were ‘the Irishmen of the South’, combining brilliance with laziness and hospitality. Spain had ‘always been run by a few people who work[ed] eighteen hours a day, the others [we]re already graduates in the Honours School of Leisure’.39 Not that leisurely life was uniformly denigrated. Most writers 376 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 happily made connections between such characteristics and notions of a bucolic bliss sadly lost to the modern and civilized world. Typically, guidebooks promoted the opportunity for British tourists to observe the ‘pastimes, dances, musical festivi- ties and athletic contests associated with . . . peasant life’. In northern Spain, Michael Mason found ‘the rough hewn wheels of ox-carts, beehives and doors’ to be ‘refreshing to English eyes’ while the primitive harvesting methods still employed in Andalucía were cause for H. Hessell Tiltman to enthuse.40 Although the rustic image was undoubtedly a valid attraction, and, of course, is still a promoted charm of Spanish holidays, it was an image which in the 1930s remained associated with quaint uneducated peasants. Guidebook writers, and most travel writers, ignored evidence of poverty, or at least cloaked it behind the romanticized imagery of ‘sun-burnt and dusty peasants leisurely conjuring grain, oil and wine out of the marl of a shade- less land’.41 Poverty was thus shielded behind notions of rural contentment and any indication of change to this image was regretted as likely to spoil the beauty of the past. A recently-built biscuit factory was accordingly enough to remove one Basque town from a guidebook itinerary, whilst Hollywood films, American motor-cars and Garbo haircuts were regarded as deeply regrettable cultural intrusions.42 The commonly advanced, twofold appeal of Spain, then, combined high cultural heritage with rustic charm. The former was implicitly associated with the traditional ruling classes: ‘the marquis represented the pageant of Spain’; and the latter with the peasantry: ‘those sturdy and splendid types . . . courteous and quiet in their rugged simplicity’.43 Married to this image was the notion that all Spaniards, irrespective of birthright, shared common virtues. To hospitality and courage were added individual and national pride, personal honour and collective respect. Guidebooks and travelogues alike frequently referred to what Tiltman described as the ‘complete absence of snobbery and . . . of class distinctions’. ‘Each man is a caballero — equal in blood to any king — and he knows it’, declared one writer, a sentiment echoed in the 1929 Blue Guide to Southern Spain which know- ingly advised tourists that ‘every Spaniard (be his class what it may) considers himself a caballero and expects to be treated with courtesy’.44 In guide literature, then, the poverty and inequalities which tourists were likely to encounter were veiled behind Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 377 notions of Spanish dignity and pride, shared culture, and tradi- tions: an image which could not fail to appeal to ‘one nation’ Tories and which, in July 1936, would instantly become associated with the nationalist movement. This representation in travel guides also served, if not to dis- miss, then to sideline the strikes and political disturbances which increased in number during the first half of the decade. While travel writers frequently alluded to the political climate and offered a variety of interpretations, unsurprisingly in guide books such references were rare. Where they were acknowledged they were categorized as just another ‘old Spanish custom’. ‘Revolu- tions, riots and elections’ were, declared Tiltman, simply inter- linked ‘manifestations of political excitement in España.’ Even in 1936, potential holidaymakers were being reassured that the Spanish only ‘indulge in revolution every now and then because it is fun. It wakes them up a bit, if only for a while.’45 While some travel writers — as opposed to those of guidebooks — subscribed to such themes , others attempted less frivolous interpretations, most frequently raising the spectres of anarchy and Soviet communism. However, the partial picture of Spain offered in guidebook literature to the average middle-class British tourist simply reinforced ideas already shaped in schooling and popular culture. Holidaymakers were bound within the parameters of such expectations and further constricted by unfamiliar surroundings and language, limited time and organized tours, so they were hardly likely to question preconceived notions of Spain. Indeed, for those unfortunate enough to experience inclement weather on the Biscayan coast perhaps notions of ‘sunny Spain’ were the only ones to be challenged.

While the experience of holidaymakers was limited by length of stay, expectations and a determination to ‘enjoy the moment’, Spain also played host to a number of semi-permanent visitors and supported a significant expatriate community. Among these were numerous British writers. Somerset Maugham, Robert Graves, the Leftist author Ralph Bates, the poet and novelist Gerald Brenan, and the young Laurie Lee were just some of those who during this period spent significant spells working, 378 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 living and travelling in Spain and who chose to write of their experiences either at the time or later. For some this experience translated into political idealism. Notably, Bates used his fiction to express sympathy with left wing movements in Spain, later took part in the defence of Madrid, and edited the International Brigade publication Volunteer for Liberty. However, few Britons living or working in pre-Civil War Spain responded with such personal involvement. Unlike many of the literati, moreover, most were staunchly Conservative.46 As will be argued, for most of these individuals, contact with Spanish political issues was at best ground for amusement, at worst a source of tension. The largest number of expatriates comprised comfortably-off people who had congregated in colonies, notably on the Mediterranean coast and on the island of Mallorca. As an American traveller, Henry Philips, observed in 1931, the island had long since been discovered as an ideal winter resort by the English, and they were now being joined by increasing numbers of Americans.47 In 1935, Charles Graves estimated the Anglo-American presence in Mallorca at approximately 4000 and noted the publication of an English language 12-page newspaper, the Palma Daily Post, to serve this colony.48 A year later, Fodor’s guide, referring to the ‘many Aunt Matildas’ of Mallorca, observed that Palma had not only a British vice-consul but ‘English church services, an English teashop, an English circulating library, and a social club’. Similarly Málaga’s ‘fairly large English colony’ boasted an English church and cemetery, British consulate and club, and a resident English doctor, whilst Valencia at least offered English church services.49 The degree to which these expatriate groups sought to replicate the comfort of familiar institutions suggests that life, for most, remained distinct from the influence of Spanish culture. Cer- tainly this was the experience reflected in many contemporary commentaries — and interestingly, as recent research concludes, this was a pattern still evident in the 1990s.50 In 1936, with some sardonic exaggeration, Tiltman remarked that ‘Torremolinos has been developed as a suburb of London . . . where you can buy an ice-cream as easily as in Tooting’.51 That a few months later the majority of the Anglo-American residents of Torremolinos, on their way to evacuation, could be transported in just two, admittedly crowded, local buses, both demonstrates the extent of Tiltman’s exaggeration and suggests Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 379 the tendency of travellers to attach an inflated significance to the discovery of fellow-nationals abroad. Nevertheless, that at least one-hundred Britons, Americans and Australians were resident in the area before the Civil War and other sources suggest four times that number.52 According to socialite Nancy Ford- Inman, the main interests of this ‘English’ colony were pseudo- intellectual chatter — ‘setting the world to rights (by peaceful means)’ — and an ‘immense interest’ in each other’s affairs. In Ford-Inman’s experience, the favourable exchange rate, artistic inspiration, and for some, ‘a search of sun’, were the prime attrac- tions for the British expatriate community around Málaga.53 However, any contact between the expatriate community and the indigenous population was defined by inherent social and cultural attitudes. Ordinary local people were generally treated with amused condescension, the middling bourgeoisie with a degree of scorn, and the aristocratic few with an admiration tempered only by notions of English superiority: ‘Carlo is a true aristocrat . . . he’s never done a thing in his life, but he does nothing ten times more charmingly than anyone else.’54 Even enthusiasts such as Robert Graves, who had made Mallorca his home since 1929, ‘confessed’ to ‘having few Spanish friends’, citing as reasons the incompatibility of Spanish mealtimes, the ‘formality of Spanish households’, and Spanish patriarchal strictures.55 For many Britons living in Spain, immediate concerns were largely restricted to the hiring and firing of cooks and maids; servants who could not tell the difference between silver and aluminium spoons were clearly an annoyance to Mallorcan resident Bessie Beckett.56 Complaints such as those voiced by Málaga villa owners Bill and Ada Locke that, unlike their English counter- parts, Spanish servants were ‘impossible to train’ on account of their poor memories, led both to frustration at perceived Spanish failings and to seemingly irrational confrontations with local sindicatos (trade unions). The reaction of the Lockes to a strike which involved their own domestic staff served only to confirm the attitude adopted by many expatriates:

[T]he part that annoys me is to be forced to concede to the demands of a lot of servant girls and boys . . . can’t anything be done about Britishers being insulted like this? I mean they might be polite about it.

Such behaviour could only be faced with British resolve, the ‘British Lion’ and the ‘British Bulldog’ standing firm against the 380 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 boisterous Spanish mob. For temporary resident Ford-Inman, the minor triumph of obtaining a hot bath in face of a local fuel strike was enough for her to claim to have ‘kept up the prestige of the British Raj’, a claim which highlights the mix of home counties smugness and imperial superiority with which the attitudes of many expatriates were imbued.57 For the majority then, the experience of living in Spain, shelter- ing behind a self-imposed structure of familiar British institutions and stubbornly adhering to ideas of empire and a ‘British way of life’, would have done little to alter preconceived expectations of Spain and her people. Experience of industrial or rural unrest for this group was viewed in the context of endemic Spanish idleness and political mayhem. While throughout the 1930s expatriates were clearly aware of reports in the British press of Spanish civil unrest, the generally expressed feeling was that such reports were grossly exaggerated. For example, firsthand experience of revolution in October 1934 did not lessen the enthusiasm of would-be hoteliers Nancy and Archie Johnstone or deter the retirement plans of Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell. To the Johnstones, troops guarding the local railway station seemed less than threatening, for although they had bayonets fixed they also reclined in deckchairs and abandoned their posts during the siesta. For Chalmers Mitchell, who had planned retirement in Spain since 1928, ‘London reports of violence and killings in the streets of Seville’ were overstated or the result of inadequately examined hearsay. Indeed, following the election of the Popular Front government Chalmers Mitchell co-authored a letter to The Times condemning what he and his collaborators saw as press mis- representation of events in Spain.58 Intent on enjoying their comfortable surroundings, and insu- lated by national and class convictions, it is not surprising that after the July 1936 rebellion many British residents attached further sinister overtones to the local incidents that they had witnessed, or at least had been told about. Like Ford-Inman, Málaga resident Chalmers Mitchell accorded little significance to the local strike action in the area. The early months of 1936 saw members of Málaga’s expatriate community ‘playing bridge at the club’, golf on ‘an inefficient but beautiful course’, motoring in the neighbourhood, and making ‘mutual visits for luncheon, dinner or tea’. To this ‘colony’, Spanish politics and the election campaign were of ‘no special interest’. Two years later Chalmers Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 381

Mitchell, whose sympathies lay with the Republicans, was to reflect that ‘it was odd . . . how much of all the ferment I failed to notice, and how blind I was to the perils awaiting Spain’.59 The day-to-day lifestyle experiences of those Britons working in Spain were similar in many ways to those of their more leisured compatriots, although as we shall see their interpretation of political unrest was more acute. Although some employment was on an individual basis (for example, Ralph Bates spent some years working in the Barcelona dockyards and then as a travelling mechanic), most expatriate employees worked for British concerns operating in Spain. According to Harry Gannes and Theo Repard almost 2000 Britons were employed in the country in 1933. A number of these worked as engineers and managers in the British-owned copper and sulphur mines of Rio Tinto and Tharsis.60 Others were similarly involved across a range of com- mercial and industrial enterprises, notably the huge British interests and investment in the Orcanera Company mines near Bilbao, and the Barcelona Power, Light and Traction Company. Indeed, it has been estimated that at the outbreak of the Civil War some 40 per cent of foreign investment in Spain was British.61 However, again the opportunity or desire to form contact with Spaniards in other ways than work-based relationships, appears to have been limited. The position and income of expatriate employees often meant that they imposed a form of ‘industrial imperialism’. Nowhere was this more manifest than in the British quarters at Rio Tinto. Here, in the hilltop village of Bella Vista, expatriates endeavoured to recreate surroundings with which they were familiar. Driving through the area in 1929, Charles Freeston recorded his astonishment at coming across ‘a group of men in white flannels standing at various points on a green sward’. However, for Freeston, the discovery of a cricket match in progress in southern Spain was ‘no longer mysterious when [he] learned that the famous copper mines were owned and mined by Englishmen’.62 Away from work the members of this British community worshipped in their own church, played croquet and cricket, and relaxed in their own seaside holiday retreat at Punta Umbria. Here, the only Spaniards permitted entrance were maids, and their quarters were set apart from those of the relax- ing Britons. This tradition of segregation and paternalism in the mining areas of Rio Tinto and Tharsis was only just coming 382 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 under serious challenge during the years of the Second Republic. As S.G. Checkland has concluded, the largely Scottish contin- gent of engineers and managers at Rio Tinto ‘seem to have taken little intellectual or emotional interest in Spain or its peoples’.63 Nor was this pattern unique to the mining areas of the south. Commenting on the behaviour of his compatriots residing in Spain, Charles Armstrong, a Briton who had lived and worked in Madrid and Barcelona throughout the 1920s, caustically observed that ‘their life is, of course, very similar to that of the English the world over’. Armstrong, a part-time teacher at the English school in Barcelona and a forceful advocate of the Rivera dictatorship, went on to note that British parents ‘generally object to their children mixing with the “native” children’ on the irrational principle that ‘foreign children are immoral’, a notion apparently shaped by the failure of Spanish children to use euphemisms when asking to use the toilet.64 Far from absorbing Spanish culture, evidence suggests that expatriates endeavoured to impose their own upon their hosts. Local Mallorcans were understandably annoyed when, during Christmas celebrations, their ‘ardently patriotic’ British guests insisted on toasting King George V and endeavoured to sing the British national anthem. British employees took particular pride in having introduced the indigenous population to association football and local youth to the stimulating joys of scouting, this latter considered a means of cultivating a degree of self-discipline regarded as absent in their elders. Football and scouting were seen by several British commentators as an optimistic indicator of cultural improvement; for, as one observer disdainfully remarked: ‘up to the present the Spaniard has rarely taken physi- cal exercise of any sort’.65 Elsewhere, growing participation by all classes in these activities, and of the upper classes in tennis, was seen by some Britons as ‘a hopeful sign’ that the indolent Spaniard was at last recognizing the need to keep fit. And ‘civilization’ was clearly on the horizon when, at least ‘with the rich’, ‘the custom of afternoon tea [was] becoming general’.66 For most British employees in Spain, perhaps their most potent experience was contact with industrial strife. More directly affected by strike action than villa dwellers, British employees and investors offered increasingly apocalyptic interpretations of industrial and political unrest. At the mines of Huelva province a series of confrontations with both the anarchist and Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 383

‘communist-led’ (actually socialist) unions, frustrating disputes between rival union confederations, and often expensive negoti- ations (both in taxes and concessions) with government bodies, constituted a pattern which British investors felt the advent of the Republic had only exacerbated. At least, they felt, under the auspices of Rivera — termed the ‘Great Dictator’ — there had been public order. Strikes proliferated throughout the country during the 1930s, and following the election of the Popular Front government in February 1936 the situation seemed even more volatile. For example, Sir Auckland Geddes, in his annual chairman’s address, described the situation at Rio Tinto as one of ‘ceaseless political unrest based on the expectation of . . . a coming socialist revolution’, a period of ‘political turmoil, strikes [and] increased expenses’.67 For those Britons with financial and economic interests in Spain, the period was one of trepidation. For British investors the Republic became synonymous with a fear of communist aspirations; for British employees the period represented increasingly fractious and complicated local labour relations and a growing threat to personal safety. At the outbreak of the Civil War, such experiences and fears were prominent in shaping attitudes and allegiances. The sympathies of most of the Britons involved in Spanish enterprises lay naturally with the rebel nationalists, who seemed to represent ‘order’. In contrast, the proliferation of collectives and reports of ‘red reprisals’ in the Republican zone served only to confirm the fears shaped over recent years. Therefore, many British residents and employees lived and worked under a form of apartheid, their only equal Spanish con- tacts being of their own social class. At best, ordinary Spaniards were regarded with patronizing amusement. Many expatriates openly doubted the wisdom of deposing a legitimate monarch, who after all, represented all that they held dear, and regarded Rivera’s rule as representing ‘the golden years’ of improved standards and relative peace. On the other hand, by the end of 1931 life in the Republic had already gone to the devil. Why, complained one English resident, taxi drivers no longer removed their caps, and ticket collectors no longer bowed.68 More serious to British business interests was the increasing perception that Spanish political and industrial turmoil were associated with bolshevism and anarchy. Since, broadly speaking, Franco and the nationalist movement seemed to represent the old, pined-for 384 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 standards and the best hope of stability, the likely direction of British sympathy following the summer of 1936 is clear. During the Civil War the experiences of holidaymakers and expatriates were to have a bearing upon various British responses to issues and events. One interesting correlation may be observed in the British response to the plight of the Basque people during the late summer of 1937. The popularity of the northern coast of Spain with travellers and the holiday experiences gained there may be seen as helping to generate a wider British public sympathy toward the Basques. Here the character and customs of the people were often unquestioningly romanticized by travel writers and were frequently distinguished from those of the rest of Spain. Readers were typically informed that ‘there is nothing “dago-ey” about their appearance or manner, nothing greasy or suggestive of olives and unwasheness’ [sic].69 Besides being seen as courteous and as having no notions of class or caste, significantly Basques were regarded as being more religious, independent and industrious than other Spaniards. Notions of this distinct Basque national identity had long been established in travel accounts and in part paralleled the notions advanced in the rhetoric of the region’s aspirations to nationalism.70 Indeed, as the military rebellion escalated into internecine war, Basque support for the Republic was largely motivated by ambitions of regional autonomy. In this staunchly Catholic region, anti-clerical reprisals were not the problem experienced elsewhere, with the bourgeois nationalist party, the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco), at best only a cautious and conditional ally of the government, largely tempering the actions of more radical elements. As the war took hold, Kate O’Brien, significantly in view of the widely perceived atheism of the Republic, linked the notion of Basque Catholicism with the cause of democracy. Evocatively, she voiced the view that ‘steeped in local pride, in Basque nationalism, deeply and irrevocably Catholic and believing, Vizcaya is passionately democratic, passionately for justice and common sense’.71 Importantly, the most commonly advanced notions were ones with which the British public could easily identify. Paradoxically, they often mirrored the very virtues lauded in the nationalist cause. In 1937, as the northern provinces reeled under the advance of Mola’s nationalist army, these impressions of Basque character were to be among those which would be called upon as British merchantmen ran the Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 385 nationalist blockade, as the Condor Legion bombed Guernica, and most notably in the cause of the Basque refugee children. The effect of returning expatriates was more immediately relevant to British responses. Although following the rebellion, British residents in government loyalist areas were observed ‘turn[ing] out Spanish friends who had taken refuge with them during the early disturbances’, they were nonetheless noted to be ‘wholly out of sympathy with the legitimate Government of Spain’.72 There were of course notable exceptions such as Chalmers Mitchell and Gerald Brenan, whose sympathies were clearly with the Republic and whose later and more considered recollections added to a developing popular support for the republican cause. However, their measured accounts have perhaps blurred the impact upon public opinion made by the more immediate testimonies of those British refugees — holidaymakers, expatriate workers and retirees — arriving in Gibraltar or back in Britain during the early weeks of the war. Forced by circumstances to abandon their holidays, assets or comfortable lifestyle, many of these Britons readily passed on personal experiences of strikes and exaggerated stories of both past and more recent acts of violence: a pattern commented upon both by Chalmers Mitchell in Málaga and by the Johnstones in Catalonia, these being two areas in which the Right’s rebellion was initially thwarted. The arrival of the Royal Navy to effect evacuation added to the feeling of excitement and even helped to generate an atmosphere of panic, those leaving becoming con- vinced that ‘they had escaped death only by the merciful inter- vention of the British Navy’.73 Significantly, in the shaping of a British popular view of the war, this atmosphere was one encouraged by a large section of the British press. For example, being eager for eyewitness accounts and keen to add a national angle, the Daily Mail related the personal experiences of no fewer than eight British refugees within the first week of hostilities, and the Daily Express, six, establishing a pattern which would colour reports throughout the early months of the war.74 With few exceptions, the testimonies of these British refugees favoured the nationalists. Stories of atrocities committed by red hordes were elaborated and even fabricated, while accounts of nationalist reprisals were con- spicuous by their absence. It was with some amazement that on reading newspapers from home, those Britons still living and 386 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 holidaying with little disturbance in Tossa de Mar learned that they were supposed to be ‘trapped among wild Bolsheviks . . . who were howling for their blood, while the rebels . . . were doing their utmost to arrive in time to save them from Something Worse than Death’.75 Such vivid eyewitness reports, framed in easily accepted stereotypical imagery, helped to establish the impression from the onset that the war was a Manichean struggle between barbaric communism and Christian civilization, imagery that was rapidly adopted by the nationalist movement itself. In doing so they also added validity to messages long aimed at the British public. Throughout the 1930s the contrast between British peace and stability and Spanish unrest and revolution had received repeated reference in popular literature, in the press and in political rhetoric. ‘Aren’t You Glad You Live in England?’, glowed one headline as the horror stories accumulated.76 The failure of ‘thirteen-day trippers’ to see beyond their preconceived expectations, and the tendency of most expatriates to adhere to a pattern of cultural and social insulation, meant that there was little early challenge and much tacit support for such simplistic interpretations. The Left’s concepts of a new Spain emerging from the feudalistic hand of the past and of a democracy facing militaris- tic despotism, were at best only partly formed and received little support from refugee experiences. On the other hand, supporters of the nationalist movement were able effortlessly to equate all the perceived virtues of Spanish character and culture with the notion of Franco’s Christian crusade. At the same time, they could denigrate the loyalists by associating them with perceived Spanish failings. The effectiveness of such right-wing propa- ganda and the uncertain response of the British mainstream Left during the early months of the war can in part be explained by the tales offered by returning refugees. Selected and elaborated by the media, their stories both sanctioned the cause of the Right and at the same time reinforced the notion that the Spanish Civil War was not a British concern. If, during the course of the next three years, public opinion progressively questioned the validity of the nationalist cause, very few came to call for any direct British involvement in what was to remain for most an essentially alien conflict. Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 387

Notes

1. Kate O’Brien, Farewell Spain (London 1937), 23–4. 2. Sir Auckland Geddes, ‘Rio Tinto Company Annual Report and Chair- man’s Address, 1936’, cited in David Avery, Not on Queen Victoria’s Birthday: The Story of the Rio Tinto Mines (London 1974), 354. 3. Douglas Jerrold, Georgian Adventure (London, 1937), 363. 4. Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (London 1992, first published 1969), 260. 5. Charles Graves, Trip-tyque (London 1936), 5. 6. Nancy Johnstone, Hotel in Flight (London 1939), 165. 7. Trevor C. Smith, San Sebastian and the Basque Country (Liverpool 1935), 9. 8. Tom Buchanan, ‘“A Far Away Country of Which We know Nothing?” Perceptions of Spain and its Civil War in Britain, 1931–1939’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1993), 1–24; also Britain and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge 1997); John Walton, ‘British Perceptions of Spain and their Impact on Attitudes to the Spanish Civil War: Some Additional Evidence’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1994), 283–99. (hereafter ‘Perceptions’). 9. See, e.g. Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism (London 1991), ch. 14. 10. H.M. Tomlinson, South to Cadiz (London 1934), 217–19, 220. 11. H. Hessell Tiltman, European Excursions (London 1936), 256. 12. See Nancy Johnstone, Hotel in Spain (London 1937). 13. Charles L. Freeston, The Roads of Spain: A 5000 Miles’ Journey in the New Touring Paradise (London 1936, first published 1930), 144, 163, 279; Findlay Muirhead, ed., Blue Guides: Southern Spain and Portugal (London and Paris 1929), cvii, 60 and 308. 14. Muirhead, Southern Spain and Portugal, xiii. 15. Sydney Clark, Spain on £10 (London 1935); Frances Williams, Journey into Adventure: The Story of the Workers’ Travel Association (London 1960), 122; Eugene Fodor, ed., Aldor’s 1937 in Europe (London 1937), which advertised WTA cruises from £7 for 7 days. 16. J.M. Sada, ‘Anuncios en San Sebastián 1885–1950’, cited in Walton, ‘Perceptions’; B. McLoughlin, Railways of the Fylde (Preston 1992), 62. 17. According to a British Institute of Public Opinion survey in June 1939, of the 59 per cent of respondents who could afford a holiday that year some 10 per cent intended going abroad, with another 2 per cent embarking on cruises. A Gallup opinion poll of December 1937 returned that 25 per cent of respondents had previously travelled to the con-tinent. Hadley Cantrell and Mildred Strunk, eds, Public Opinion 1935–1946 (Connecticut 1951), 991–2; The Gallup Inter- national Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937–1975, Vol. 1 (New York 1977). 18. See e.g. John K. Walton and Jenny Smith, ‘The First Century of Beach Tourism in Spain: San Sebastián and the Playas del Norte from the 1830s to the 1930s’, in M. Barke, J. Towner and M. T. Newton, eds, Tourism in Spain: Critical Issues (Wallingford 1996), 35–61, and John K. Walton, ‘The Seaside Resorts of Western Europe, 1750–1939’, in Stephen Fisher, ed., Recreation and the Sea (Exeter 1997), 36–56. 19. Smith, San Sebastian, 10–11. Smith was a member of the Liverpool University Summer School, Spanish studies programme headed by Professor 388 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3

Allison Peers. Richard Viner, Twixt France and Spain, 2nd edn. (London, 1932, first published 1929), 107. 20. Findlay Muirhead, ed., The Blue Guide to Northern Spain With the Balearic Islands (London and Paris 1930), cix. 21. Clark, Spain on £10, 118, 120. 22. Freeston, Roads of Spain, 24–37. 23. Graves, Trip-tyque, 42, 44, 58. 24. Walton, ‘Perceptions’, 288; Graves, Trip-tyque, 125. 25. Bernard Newman, I Saw Spain (London 1936), 151; Johnstone, Hotel in Spain, 245; Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke 1994), 17. 26. Williams, Journey into Adventure, 122–4; Co-operative News, 19 September 1936. 27. Williams, Journey into Adventure, 117. 28. Fodor, ed., Aldor’s 1937, 597, 601. 29. Graves, Trip-tyque, 43. 30. O’Brien, Farewell Spain, 21–5. 31. Johnstone, Hotel in Spain, 196–9, 211. 32. Fodor, ed., On the Continent . . . 1936 (London 1936), 205. 33. Michael Mason, Trivial Adventures in the Spanish Highlands (London 1932), vii. 34. Graves, Trip-tyque, 12, 149. 35. Newman, I Saw Spain, 154, 156. 36. Jan and Cora Gordon, Two Vagabonds in Spain (London 1931, first published as Poor Folk in Spain, 1922), 102. 37. Henry Albert Philips, Meet the Spaniards (London 1931), 240; Muirhead, ed., Blue Guides: Southern Spain, cxii–cxiii; Clark, Spain on £10, 76. 38. E.g. Smith, San Sebastian, 11. 39. Fodor, 1936, 213; Graves, Trip-tyque, 3–6, 60, 124. 40. Smith, San Sebastian, 77; Mason, Trivial Adventures, 40; Tiltman, Euro- pean Excursions, 111. 41. Tomlinson, South to Cadiz, 125–6. Similarly, Tiltman, European Excursions, 112, concludes that the Spanish peasant ‘like his Chinese counterpart is inured to hardship and kept alive by the sun’. 42. Smith, San Sebastian, 35; Philips, Meet the Spaniards, 130, 228. 43. Walter Starkie, Spanish Raggle Taggle (Bath 1974, first published 1934), 30; Mason, Trivial Adventures, 96. 44. Tiltman, European Excursions, 118–19; Mason, Trivial Adventures, 105; Muirhead, Southern Spain, cxv. 45. Tiltman, European Excursions, 119; Fodor, 1936, 225. 46. This pattern was still evident in May 2001, with the Costa del Sol Conservative clubs registering a membership of 15,000 compared with the local International Labour Group’s total of 40. Tim Reid, ‘Costa Vote is a Ray of Sunshine for Hague’, The Times, 28 May 2001, p. 11. 47. Philips, Meet the Spaniards, 129. 48. Graves, Trip-tyque, 222. 49. Fodor, 1936, 252, 266, 268. 50. Karen O’Reilly, The British on the Costa del Sol: Transnational Identities and Local Communities (London and New York 2000). According to O’Reilly, Shelmerdine, British Experiences in Pre-Civil War Spain 389

British expatriates seek to recreate their idea of a ‘traditional community’, an idealized past, and while relating to notions such as Spanish hospitality, courte- ousness, etc. fail to integrate with their hosts: ‘they are symbols of lost Empire, of national pride, of ambivalence towards the Other . . .’ 51. Tiltman, European Excursions, 108. 52. See M. Barke and L.A. France, ‘The Costa del Sol’, in M. Barke, J. Towner and H.T. Newton, Tourism in Spain (Wallingford, Oxon. 1996), 267; Ruth Kedzie Wood, ‘Tourist’s Spain and Portugal’, cited in Walton, ‘Perceptions’, 295. 53. Nancy Ford-Inman and Marion L. Nutting, Spinsters in Spain (London 1938), 94. 54. Ibid., 121, 130. 55. Robert Graves and Paul Hogarth, Majorca Observed, 2nd edn. (London 1965), 33. 56. Bessie Beckett, Memories of Mallorca (Edinburgh 1947), 12. 57. Ford-Inman and Nutting, Spinsters in Spain, 62, 124–30, 160. 58. Johnstone, Hotel in Spain, 30; Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, My House in Málaga (London 1938), 40. Letter to the Editor of The Times from Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, Herbert Barker and George Young, 25 February 1936. 59. Mitchell, My House in Málaga, 79, 87. 60. Harry Gannes and Theo Repard, Spain in Revolt (London 1936), note 1, 175. 61. Charles E. Harvey, The Rio Tinto Company: An Economic History of a Leading International Concern, 1873–1954 (Penzance 1981), notes that two British companies, Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds and the Consett Iron Company, owned 80 per cent of the Orconera Mines. Jill Edwards, The British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London and Basingstoke 1979), 65. 62. Freeston, Roads of Spain, 135. 63. S.G. Checkland, The Mines of Tharsis: Roman, French and British Enter- prise in Spain (London 1967), 176–7. 64. Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, Life in Spain Today (Edinburgh 1930), 73, 168. 65. Beckett, Memories of Mallorca, 34; Avery, Not on Queen Victoria’s Birth- day, 289; Armstrong, Life in Spain, 92. 66. Armstrong, Life in Spain, 65–6, 92. 67. Geddes, ‘Report and Chairman’s Address, 1936’, cited in Avery, Not on Queen Victoria’s Birthday, 354. 68. Beckett, Memories of Mallorca, 141. 69. Mason, Trivial Adventures, 13. 70. See John K. Walton, ‘Tradition and Tourism: Representing Basque Identities in San Sebastián and its Province, 1848–1936’, in N. Kirk, ed., Northern Identities (Ashgate 2000), 87–108. 71. O’Brien, Farewell Spain, 202. 72. Mitchell, My House in Malága, 126. 73. Ibid., 209; Johnstone, Hotel in Spain, 277. 74. Daily Mail, 20, 21, 22, 25 July 1936; Daily Express, 22, 25 July 1936; see Brian Shelmerdine, ‘Britons in an Un-British War: Domestic Newspapers and the Participation of UK Nationals in the Spanish Civil War’, North West Labour History, No. 22 (1997–98), 20–47. 390 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3

75. Johnstone, Hotel in Spain, 283. 76. Daily Mirror, 5 August 1936.

Brian Shelmerdine is a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire, working on his thesis ‘British perceptions of Spain during the 1930s, and their use in the interpretation of events of the Spanish Civil War’.