FRANCO’S BREAD: AUXILIO SOCIAL FROM BELOW, 1937–1943 319 FRANCO’S BREAD: AUXILIO SOCIAL FROM BELOW, 1937–1943 Óscar Rodríguez Barreira “I understand that they were terrible years, years of famine, but at the end of the World War, we even ate herbs. It was criminal…” It was the echo on the road that brought the rumor of the yearning for news: Madrid is ours! Madrid has been taken! It was March 2, 1939. After some Asturian dynamite workers blew up a wall near the Gal Perfume Shop the national troops went in, under the midday sun, through Calle Princesa, up the Gran Vía to the heart of Madrid: Callao, with its strategic Palace of the Press and the emblematic, already crowded Puerta del Sol. There, military discipline was lost among the crowd. All the people from Madrid poured out, with their hearts to their lips, and in their hearts a cry: “Franco!” Men, women and children carried bows and flags, and everywhere, passion for the general. In the Ministry of Govern- ment, on the grand balcony the Spanish flag waved to all the citizens who waved back showing their admiration.1 Although on that warm Tuesday Madrid awoke timidly and expectantly with white flags on the capitol or telephone company buildings, enthusi- asm grew on the streets as the hours went by. Houses began to don the national colors while blue shirts and improvised bands rehearsed the “Cara al Sol” hymn. The occasion surely deserved it. As the headlines of Sevilla’s ABC announced Spain had taken back its capital city. It had taken three years, but at long last, the insurgents had recovered Madrid, their Castilian, their zarzuela fan, Catholicism, and the national city. The urban mob and the intellectuals with foreign tendencies had drowned the capital in the most absolute misery, turning it into a Madridgrad. The Russianization was carried out conscientiously; never was more poverty or desolation seen. Malasaña’s daughters would come to the national troops when they entered, carrying their starving children, imploring the soldiers, who gave them what they could out of their rations. But it would not be charity, even 1 ABC (Sevilla), March 29, 1939, ABC (Madrid), March 29, 1939 and El País, March 28-3- 2009. 320 Óscar Rodríguez Barreira from the troops, that would take charge of liberating the people of Madrid from their misery. At two o’clock Auxilio Social (Social Aid) arrived at the martyred city. Social justice was coming. Many of those blessed women of the crusade that composed the Auxilio Social were carrying bags of bread on their shoulders along with tins of condensed milk, bars of chocolate, and other foods. They were cheered with delirious frenzy. Concealing the exhaustion that they must have felt, the women joyfully sang “Cara al Sol” and the crowd cheered, applauded, and cried … They all deserved it. Not only did they bring bread to the homes, as the Caudillo ordered; they brought joy and enthusiasm, and that blessed faith of which the Spanish woman was, is, and will always be the loyal reservoir—educated in sacrifice and abnegation, and fused into the life of the new state through the forceful will of the Caudillo.2 The new government was aware that no country had suffered as harsh and terrible a famine as had the people of Madrid. It was the proper occasion to show and reveal the generosity of the Caudillo, the solidarity of other regions of the New Spain everywhere, and the cheerful style that the Auxilio Social of the Falange imprinted on its social work. Under heavy rain and only a few hours after claiming victory, trucks and buses arrived at back- yards everywhere in the fatherland with food and volunteer Falangists; from Cádiz the wine, the chickpeas, chacina, sugar, and cognac … from La Coruña, potatoes, string beans, and preserves. Even the Spanish colony of Lisbon wanted to send four truckloads of foodstuffs. It was Franco’s bread making headway. As the famous writer Carmen de Icaza, who was respon- sible for the radio propaganda of Auxilio Social, said: the bread of Castille, the vegetables from Navarra, meats from Galicia and León, fruits from Aragón and Levante … the proof of brotherhood among the peoples of the New Spain.3 On the day of Victory, April 1, 1939, Auxilio Social took stock of their work in hunger-stricken Madrid. Figures speak for themselves, or so they understood. On March 29, they gave out 366,877 rations and on the follow- ing day, 800,000 rations of bread, 600,000 of cold food and 100,000 warm meals. On March 31, the date of the inauguration of the first dining hall, 2 ABC (Sevilla), March 29, 1939. Zira Box, España, Año cero (Madrid: Alianza, 2010). Javier Ugarte, La nueva Covadonga insurgente (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1998). Mechthild Albert, ed., Vencer no es convencer (Frankfurt: Iberoamericana, 1998). ABC (Sevilla), March 29, 1939, ABC (Madrid), March 29 and 30, 1939. 3 ABC (Sevilla), March 30 and 31, 1939, 1939 and ABC (Madrid), April 1, 1939. Michael Seidman, “Individualisms in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War,” The Journal of Modern History 68, no. 1 (1996): 63–83, and Javier Cervera, Madrid en Guerra (Madrid: Alianza, 1999)..