Cut outs of the Republican Navy

This set of children’s cut outs, created by a collectivized printing firm in Barcelona, shows the makeup of the Republican fleet in the early months of the Civil War. 

As the conflict concluded, many of these ships would end up in Bizerte, in the colony of Tunisia. 

The Civil War ended with a war among Republicans.  It began on March 4, when military units opposed to the government of Juan Negrín and his Communist allies rose up in Cartagena. The rebellion was led at the national level by Col. Segismundo Casado, who had the support of anarchists and moderate Socialists as well as part of the Republican high command. In Cartagena, however, it was controlled from the outset by members of the Fifth Column whose goal was to deliver the naval base and the fleet to Franco.  

To head off this risk, on March 5, Miguel Buiza, the commander of the fleet who was a supporter of Casado’s but also an anti-Francoist, ordered the ships to sail for Algeria. The escaping fleet consisted of three cruisers, eight destroyers, and a number of smaller vessels. Troops loyal to the government defeated the rebellion in Cartagena on March 7, but the fleet continued its course towards North Africa. When it arrived in Oran, French authorities told Buiza to head for Bizerta, Tunisia, where they had a major naval base. It arrived there on March 7. France had recently recognized Franco’s government as the government of Spain and on March 30, it handed over the fleet. Of the 4,000 crewmen, some 2,300 decided to return to Spain where they were arrested immediately and interned at Rota, Cádiz. At least 23 of them would be executed. 

The flight of its fleet was the penultimate disaster to hit the Republic. When the fronts collapsed three weeks later, tens of thousands of Republicans desperately trying to escape Francoist repression headed for the ports on the Mediterranean, especially Alicante. There were not enough ships to transport them all, and even fewer to escort the few available merchant vessels and protect them from being intercepted by the Francoist warships that patrolled the coasts. When Francoist troops took the port cities, the thousands of Republicans trapped there were immediately sent to hastily improvised and brutal concentration camps, where thousands were shot. 

The Republican sailors who chose to remain in Bizerta, and the three hundred civilians who had accompanied them, faced many hardships. The French forced them to labour in brutal conditions on the Trans-Saharan railway and in mines. Later on, many would join the Free French forces fighting the Axis. Miguel Buiza, who joined the Foreign Legion where he rose to the rank of commander, was one of them. After World War II, he commanded a ship that carried Jewish emigrants to Palestine. He was arrested by the British authorities there and briefly interned in a concentration camp in Haifa.