MANY readers will know about the Spanish ‘Legion’, the crack unit of the Spanish Army, based in Ronda and Almeria.
You will have likely seen the Legion on the streets of Andalucia’s major towns this week, as the regiment takes part in the Holy Week processions.
Its loyalty to the Catholic Church, and its obsession with death, are characteristics deliberately imposed on it by its founder and original commander, the eccentric José Millán Astray y Terreros.
Millán Astray was a gallego, a native of Spain’s ultra-conservative Galicia, the north-western region. He was born in 1879.
His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but the young José knew that the Army would be his destiny.
He studied to become an officer in the academy located in the Alcázar of Toledo (later to become an important symbol of Spanish Fascism).
Upon graduation, he joined the General staff of the Spanish Army. Soon after, the Philippine Revolution broke out, and he left his position to serve there as a volunteer second lieutenant.
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He would earn numerous decorations for valour, and became a war hero for his defence at the age of 18 of the city of San Rafael, in which he fought off a rebel force of 2,000 with only 30 men.
He subsequently served in the Rif War in Morocco.
In October 1924, he was wounded during an ambush, and his left arm was amputated. There would be more wounds.
A month later, he lost his right eye when it was hit by a bullet.
He habitually wore an eyepatch and a white glove on his right hand when appearing in public. Interested in forming a corps of foreign volunteers after the fashion of the French Foreign Legion, he travelled to Algeria to study its workings.
With the support of fellow Gallego Major Francisco Franco, he created the Spanish Legion, and, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, served as its first commander. He would popularise the mottos ¡Viva la Muerte! (“Long live death!”) and ¡A mí la Legión! (“To me the legion!”).
Millán Astray gave the legion a powerful ideology intended to evoke Spain’s Imperial and Christian traditions.
He also revived the Spaniard’s ancient feud with the Moors and portrayed his men as crusaders against Islamic civilization; and later as the saviours of Spain, warding off the twin evils of communism and democracy.
During the Spanish Civil War he sided with the Nationalists.
He served as director of the Office of Radio, Press, and Propaganda. It is said that he administered the press office like a military barracks, forcing journalists to fall in line in response to his whistle, and subjecting them to the same brutal harangues he had given as commander of the Legion.
Millán Astray is perhaps best remembered for a squabble with Miguel de Unamuno, the philosopher, in October 1936.
The two men were platform speakers at a symposium at the University of Salamanca, in the early days of the civil war.
From somewhere in the auditorium, someone cried out “¡Viva la Muerte!” As was his habit, Millán Astray, the founder and first commander of the Spanish Legion, responded with “¡España!“; the crowd replied with “¡Una!” [One!]. He repeated “¡España!“; the crowd then replied “¡Grande!” [Great!].
A third time, Millán Astray shouted “¡España!“; the crowd responded “Libre!” [Free!] This – Spain, one, great, and free – was a common Falangist cheer and would become a Francoist motto thereafter.
Unamuno, who was presiding over the meeting, rose up slowly and addressed the crowd: “Now I have heard this insensitive and necrophilous oath, and I find this ridiculous paradox repellent. General Millán Astray is a cripple. There is no need for us to say this with whispered tones. He is a war cripple.
“Unfortunately, Spain today has too many cripples. And, if God does not help us, soon it will have very many more. He’s a cripple, who hopes to add to the number of cripples around him.”
It was a metaphor of Spain’s plight. A clash between intelligence and obscurantism.
Millán Astray won and Unamuno lost. The professor was forced to resign and was placed under house arrest. It is now thought that his death, which followed nine weeks after the brush with Millán Astray, was in fact a Fascist murder.
Today, Millán Astray is regarded as a man of his time: extreme, unbending, intolerant. He lived on until 1954, dying (as he would have wished) at the height of Franco’s dictatorship.
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