ABSTRACT
Although the Military Rising had the great advantage of surprise and the backing of the majority of younger officers throughout mainland Spain, it fell far short of its immediate objective: to take all Spain’s major cities prior to an attack on the capital itself. Up to the beginning of July, General Franco, exiled in the Canaries, had vacillated before finally deciding that a rebellion could be justified. With his decision made, he insisted that the Rising should be for ‘Spain without a label’ – that is, that no commitment should be made to the political form that the new post-Rising regime would take. The method of making a revolution had a peculiarly Spanish look, sanctified by a long nineteenth-century Army tradition: a pronunciamiento, then a rising of the Army in provincial Spain, followed by the fall of the capital. This pattern was followed in 1936, but the timetable, scheduled to start on 18 July, had to be put forward because the plot had been discovered.
