Toasting the Spanish Republic

With the pronunciamiento against the Spanish Republic, the Spanish Consul in Sydney, Don Pedro de Ygual y Martinez, declared for General Franco and departed for Burgos. The new Consul-General, Don Ricardo Baeza Durán, arrived from Valencia in late September 1937 accompanied by his wife and two children. Forty-seven years of age, and already with a successful career in the Spanish diplomatic service, (ambassador to Chile 1931-1935), he was a writer and translator at the centre of literary circles in Madrid and London. His wife, the feminist María Martos de Baeza, had been active in the formation of the National Association of Spanish Women and the Women’s Lyceum Club in Madrid.  

From Consul Baeza’s first press conference on board ship in Port Adelaide until his final speech on departure a year later, he had hammered home the message that Spanish internal conflicts had caused the civil war but the involvement of German, Italian and Moorish troops had transformed a domestic affair into an international war that now constituted a major threat to world peace. And, the fiction of non-intervention led by Britain only made that world war more certain. 

The Consul was energetic, self-confident and experienced in international affairs. He provided skilful and popular leadership to the Spanish Aid movement. The Baezas were charming, cosmopolitan hosts and an invitation to the Spanish Consulate was highly prized in Sydney social circles. This photo from April 1938 shows the Baezas hosting more than one hundred guests at a celebration of the seventh anniversary of the proclamation of the Second Republic.  

The Spanish Relief Committee held Spanish fiestas, antiwar play nights at the New Theatre and movies were sent out from Spain for film nights. The largest event associated with the Baezas in Sydney took place in March 1938 and brought together130 delegates from 86 Australian organisations to discuss the significance of the civil war in the search for world peace.  

The Catholic press was unflagging in its attacks on the ‘the red consul’ and a ‘killer of priests and nuns’. While ignoring the Catholic barrage, Baeza responded to the more egregious of them through letters to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald. With great literary style, he laid out Spain’s new place in the modern democratic world in which universal suffrage, including women, was the cornerstone; a modern state meant decent wages for working people; and the future depended on a national education system free of religious dogma.  

In late October 1938, Consul-General Baeza announced that the family was returning to Spain so that his son, Fernando, now 18 years of age, could enlist in the Republican Army. The Baezas were bid farewell by 600 well-wishers in a public ceremony in central Sydney in a hall draped in the red, yellow and purple of the Republican flag.  

With Franco’s victory, Ricardo Baeza and his family fled to Argentina. He was called before the Francoist Tribunal for the Suppression of Freemasonry and Communism but refused to appear. In 1954, in very poor health, Ricardo Baeza Durán finally returned to Madrid where he died in February 1956.