The Battle Order That Broke the Siege of the Alcázar of Toledo

Four groupings and 13,000 militiamen: the siege of the Alcázar

Why did Franco halt his column at the walls of Toledo instead of marching on Madrid? The question arises every September 27th, and this year marks a round number: 90 years since the I Tabor of Regulares de Tetuán entered the Alcázar around 9:00 PM, closely trinc by the V Flag of the Tercio. What contemporary chronicles dubbed "liberation" was, on the ground, an operation by four groupings whose battle order deserves examination without the gloss of anthems.

The battle order that broke the siege

Four groupings, each commanded by a lieutenant colonel: Asensio Cabanillas, Fernando Barrón Ortiz, Castejón, and Delgado Serrano. All with the same composition: two tabors of Regulares —from Tetuán, Melilla, Ceuta, and Alhucemas—, a flag of the Tercio de la Legión, an artillery battery, and the services of Health, Supply, Engineers, and Vehicles. Behind them, the reserve: the Volunteer Battalion of Seville, companies of Falange from Seville, Cáceres, and Canarias, the machine-gun battalion from Plasencia, and three batteries, two of 105 mm and one of 155 mm.

Inside, the perimeter was minuscule. Moscardó concentrated almost all the Civil Guard of the province —about 800 guards— and around a thousand combatants, with sufficient water and provisions and ammunition taken from the arms factory. Facing them, the Republican side deployed about 13,000 troops among the Bernal, Burillo, Fernández Navarro, and Plaza columns, and the so-called Phantom Column, which lived up to its name and was the first to flee.

Why were the machine guns in a separate battalion?

It's striking to see an exclusive machine-gun unit instead of sections integrated into the rifle battalions. The explanation is twofold: scarcity of material and Iberian doctrine, where the machine gun was conceived as a positional support weapon, not as an organic part of the unit. This was corrected on the fly as Italian-German material began to arrive. The Falange, on the other hand, was relegated to the rear: the serious fighting was done by the Regulares and the Legion, the only troops with colonial combat experience, while the volunteers were reserved for show.

The curiosity is that half a century before the German kampfgruppe became fashionable, ad-hoc groupings were already being assembled here with whatever was available.

Did the Alcázar delay the taking of Madrid?

Here, disagreement is significant. One current holds that the decision was political, not military: the Alcázar was a symbolic capital, and Franco needed it to consolidate unified command, even though Varela had room to advance towards the capital. The other interpretation argues that the political move had been made earlier by the Republican government, insistent on taking the stronghold at any cost, and that Franco merely responded on the same propaganda battlefield.

Above all that, external support. Without the German airlift and Italian naval support in July 1936, the Army of Africa would not have crossed the Strait: there would have been no long war, only a coup drowned in two weeks. Madrid resisted in November 1936 because Soviet material arrived when it did and the International Brigades provided manpower on the front. By October 1936, the gold of the Bank of Spain was already on its way to Moscow.

The Strait and the fleet that did not close the passage

Mostly loyal petty officers, but a significant portion of the officers were not. When the conflict broke out, on many ships, sailors confronted or locked up their officers. Result: ships without anyone who knew how to command them, committees steering erratically, and no one closing the Strait when it needed to be closed, in the last week of July.

Ninety years later, the antiestéticat retains its epic and its arithmetic components. Like the Soviet resistance in the Brest fortress in 1941, which no one calls medieval. Perhaps the adjective depends on who is enduring the siege.