Antonio Álvarez Buezas writes to his wife

War correspondence is one of the most interesting historical sources for understanding the everyday life of soldiers at the front. Elusive and scarce, its preservation allows us to access the wartime accounts of all those who preferred to forget and not speak, while also enabling us to compare them with official narratives and propaganda of the time. In the image, we see the non-commissioned officer Antonio Álvarez Buezas (A Torre, Baión, 1914), a member of the Zaragoza Infantry Regiment No. 30, whose written correspondence with his wife Felisa has been preserved by the family.

A soldier and an early volunteer, he would embellish his letters with phrases such as “Long live Spain!!” or “Second Triumphal Year,” adopting the official slogans of propaganda as his own. Even so, we should not confuse assimilation with genuine acceptance—especially in a war so prolonged and traumatic for those involved. Camaraderie and longing for home weighed more than ideology when it came to seeking victory. The longing for family and for pre-war civilian life was intensified by the unease of being far from home and from the problems on the home front, sometimes related to the subsidies and payments sent by the combatants themselves. Criticism of local political bossism and “armchair strategists” in the rear was common, and it affected both wartime morale and the perception of the enemy:

“they deserve no other treatment… from the moment they try to take the bread from you and from my daughter, to me they are the greatest enemies—just as much as or even more than the Reds, with all the shots they fire at me to kill me, because the Reds are also in danger like we are. Those men don’t fire bullets, yet they do more harm with their abuses, and they don’t realize that one day they will have to pay for them.”

The immediacy of the events being described and the sense of constant surveillance forced soldiers to be careful about what they wrote home. They were aware that “certain things” such as military positions or their next posting “cannot be put in the mail,” and defeatist views were expressed in vague or inaccurate ways to avoid punishment from superiors, even though in practice censorship was limited by the sheer volume of soldiers’ correspondence. Thus, we find accounts of various attempts to avoid mobilization and deployment to the Asturian Front with the permission of the Civil Guard due to the “illness” of his wife (Loma de Otero, Asturias, 11/10/1937), as well as 

favouritism among officers.

“…seeing that no one censors my letters but me, I’m going to explain it to you… I was on duty at the gate, while other men, through friendships and other dealings… they’re what you call bootlickers… they’re the ones who get leave, and the rest of us get screwed, plainly speaking… I will make all my complaints… because it’s not right… they’re the ones enjoying many benefits that don’t belong to them.”

DMGM