The July 1936 military uprising in Seville was part of a nationwide coup d'état in Spain, launched by part of the Spanish army. It was supposed to topple local Republican administrations in Seville and western Andalusia. The uprising commenced on 18 July 1936, led by general Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. The rebels overpowered regional military command and some key units without a shot being fired, but were offered resistance by Guardia de Asalto, subordinated to the civil governor José María Varela; it was overcome later in the day. The days of 19–22 July were mostly about seizing the districts of Triana, Macarena and San Julián; they were controlled by revolutionary trade unions and radical left-wing militias. On 23 July Queipo was fully in control. The successful coup in Seville proved of vital importance for the rebels nationwide; the insurgent pocket in south-western Andalusia enabled the shift of the Army of Africa to the peninsula, and then its rapid advance towards Madrid.
Conspiracy
April and May
The first information on the military conspiracy in Seville can be traced back to early spring of 1936; it had been unfolding since late March, when comandante Eduardo Álvarez-Rementería and five captains set up a committee "contrario al Frente Popular". In late April the nationwide leader of the conspiracy, Pamplona-based general Emilio Mola, sent his envoy, colonel Francisco García-Escámez, to get in touch with Rementería and agree the basics. At the time PCE workers claimed to have discovered a "fascist plot" at the Tablada airport and alerted provincial authorities, but it is not clear whether the case was indeed related to the military conspiracy; there was no follow-up.
In May there was already a clear leadership of the subversive scheme in place: it consisted of a triumvirate of army officers headed by comandante José Cuesta Monereo and included captains Manuel Gutiérrez Flores and Manuel Escribano Aguirre. They developed an increasingly complex network; one of its key members was comandante Santiago Garrigós, commander of local Guardia Civil's branch comandancia exterior.
Preparations for the coup involved also stockpiling weapons, at the right moment to be handed over to civilians from the Falange or Requeté. In May a junior officer loyal to the government discovered such a stock at the Intendencia offices and reported the officer deemed responsible to his superiors. The case reached the highest provincial strata. The newly appointed commander of the 2. Division, the Seville garrison, and head of the II. Military Region (all Andalusia), general José Fernández Villa-Abrille, excused the officer charged, perhaps on the basis of simple caste solidarity in the military. However, José María Varela Rendueles, also newly appointed civil governor, escalated it to the Ministry of Interior. Eventually the prime minister Santiago Casares Quiroga accepted assurances from Villa-Abrille and took no action. Also in May alarming notes from a communist MP Vicente Uribe, related to strange activity in Seville "fábricas militares", were not acted upon.
June
On 1–2 June in Pamplona Mola met general Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, at the time general inspector of the Carabineros; already back in April he declared himself ready to join the coup. Mola suggested to Queipo that he assume command of the coup in Seville and later became commander of the II. Military Region (all Andalusia). Queipo vacillated; he preferred to assume command in his native Valladolid (VII. Military Region). Upon Mola's insistence – perhaps related to the fact that Queipo was on friendly terms with Villa-Abrille and was expected to lure the latter into conspiracy – Queipo agreed to tour Andalusia and assess the situation for himself.
In mid-June Queipo, who as the Carabineros inspector enjoyed freedom to travel across the country, visited numerous garrisons in Andalusia. He was welcomed rather coldly by local conspirators, who considered him politically capricious and extravagant, stained by earlier republican sympathies and masonic links. He also met Villa-Abrille. Details of their talks are not clear, it is possible if not likely that Queipo at least hinted to the former about a possibility to join a "patriotic action", but there is no information of the military governor joining the plotters; some scholars claim that Villa-Abrille declined the offer. However, his initiative was to assemble corps commanders and visit Varela; the officers were asked one by one to swear loyalty to the Republic. At the time some conspiring officers were already providing regular training to Falange militants, while Carlist requeté geared up in the countryside.
On 23 June Mola again met Queipo in Pamplona; though the latter complained about the Seville conspiracy, it was eventually agreed that Queipo would lead the coup in the Andalusian capital. However, Mola sent García-Escámez to Seville to verify Queipo's claims. Later this month Escaméz toured the province. His cryptic assessment, passed on to Mola, was "las niñas bien, las encargadas pésimas"; it meant that the plot was well developed among junior and middle-rank officers, while the top district command layer remained unreliable. Mola's conclusion based on this and other reports was that the II. Military Region was among those very well prepared, that there was a conspiracy "estado mayor paralelo" operational, and that success in Seville was almost certain. He also changed his original plan, which initially envisioned only northern garrisons advancing upon Madrid in case of failure in the capital; now also the South was about to move.
July
In early July (exact days unclear) Queipo again visited Seville, this time already as the Mola-appointed local commander of the coup, to make sure all preparations to rise were well advanced. Upon news on his arrival, Villa-Abrille travelled to Huelva, reportedly on an inspection tour. However, a scholar suggests that the military governor intended to avoid meeting Queipo. According to this theory, Villa-Abrille knew that he was among the officers under governmental surveillance, he probably expected new ambiguous suggestions and was unwilling either to face the pressure or to get trapped in an uncomfortable position. Again, Villa-Abrille took no specific action to ensure there was nothing suspicious unfolding.
According to one historian, in mid-July Queipo visited the garrison in Málaga, also within the II Military Region. According to another, on 11 July he visited Seville again, met Cuesta and travelled with him to Huelva. Both agree that he sought an interview with Villa-Abrille, but the district commander kept avoiding him. Though there were some outbursts of left-wing radical zeal, e.g. cases of singing of The Internationale by some soldiers in the barracks, there was no organized counter-action by local Communist, Socialist or Anarchist organizations, except usual and chaotic acts of street violence. The focus of Varela was rather on Falange; in July its numerous militants were detained by security.
On orders from the conspiracy command, in the evening of 16 July Queipo boarded a train in Madrid and the following morning he checked into a hotel in Seville. His actions during the following 24 hours are somewhat of a mystery. He immediately departed to Huelva, reportedly to perform inspections in Isla Cristina and Ayamonte, and despite repeated calls from the Seville conspirators, he refused to return to the Andalusian capital. Instead, he visited the Huelva civil governor Diego Jiménez Castellanos, and assured him of total loyalty to the Republic; Jiménez called his fellow governor Varela and informed him about the visit. One scholar suggests that when visiting Huelva, Queipo was simply arranging for himself a way out to Portugal in case the coup fails; another one claims that such supposition "no tiene justificación".
Hours before
On 17 July around 4 PM it was already known that there was sort of a mutiny unfolding in Spanish Morocco. Casares Quiroga ordered that any officer found travelling outside the area where he was posted should be arrested; a Guardia Civil officer called Varela asking whether this applied also to Queipo, but assured by Jiménez about Queipo's loyalty, Varela ordered not to take action. In the evening Villa-Abrille performed a number of calls to local garrisons and having heard no news of any disorder, he intended to go to rest. At this point Varela had second thoughts about Queipo and called the regional commander; however, Villa-Abrille declared that Queipo was on regular tour of duty and that there was no need to worry. The second-in-command in the II. Military Region, its chief of staff Juan Cantero Ortega, uninvolved in conspiracy, was away on summer leave.
During the late evening of 17 July the Seville conspirators gathered in Garrigós' house to tie the last knots of the rising, planned for the following day. At the same time the PCE leader Manuel Delicado Muñoz met Varela and asked him to form mixed Guardia de Asalto and workers' militia patrols, supposed to keep the military barracks under surveillance; Varela agreed, though he resisted the call to hand out weapons to the militias. During the night the Air Force commander Miguel Nuñez de Prado called Villa-Abrille and asked him to load 3 aircraft, on their way from Madrid with orders to bomb the rebels in Morocco, with bombs at the Tablada airport. Villa-Abrille issued appropriate orders, on which the mid-rank conspiracy officers defaulted. Moreover, one of them tried to destroy the aircraft, already at Tablada. He was apprehended, but the plotters downplayed the incident and reported to Villa-Abrille that the culprit was merely drunk. In the city tension was already running high; during the night the first workers' patrols emerged on the streets and one of them murdered a municipal guard, suspected of having been in anti-republican conspiracy.
In the early hours of 18 July Queipo travelled from Huelva to Seville and had a meeting with local civilian conspirators, informing them that the rising was a matter of hours. Around 11 AM he visited Villa-Abrille; the meeting was cordial and the two parted; perhaps it was a last-minute attempt on the part of Queipo to convince the regional commander. Villa-Abrille gathered all senior officers in the capitania general building and again asked them to swear allegiance to the Republic; for many it was an empty vow. In the early afternoon hours the city council members and the diputación provincial members terminated their regular sessions, planned for the day; among others, they adopted a resolution protesting the killing of the municipal guard.
Coup
18 July
The coup in Seville commenced around 2 PM, when Queipo, accompanied by a number of rebel officers, reappeared in the capitania general at Plaza de Gavidia. There are numerous opposing versions of what happened later. According to some Queipo stayed put until Villa-Abrille noticed unauthorized individuals; according to others he violently proceeded to detain the district commander; there are also accounts which claim that the two had one more gentle conversation, and it was only afterwards that Villa-Abrille and his staff were disarmed and put under guard. This way or another, apart from verbal altercation, there was no opposition encountered. Shortly afterwards Queipo and his entourage proceeded to the neighboring barracks of the 6. Granada Infantry Regiment, the largest army unit stationed in Seville. Its commander Manuel Allanegui and some of his staff refused to join; they were either lured to the capitania general building and detained, or detained first and led to capitania as prisoners. The entire regiment was easily taken over by the rebels.
The first shots were fired between 3 and 4 PM. Queipo sent patrols to major points in the city to read out the state of war declaration, and started moving sub-units towards the gobierno civil and ayuntamiento. Guardia de Asalto patrols, on Varela's order on alert, in some spots remained confused, but in others confronted the military. A chaotic shootout followed; at one point the Guardia men even attempted to push the military back to the barracks and armored vehicles of the Asaltos fired at Queipo's Gavidia headquarters. However, the loyalists soon started to withdraw and barricaded themselves in 3 key buildings at the central point of Seville, Plaza de la República (now Plaza Nueva): hotel Inglaterra, Telefónica and the civil government. At the time rebel detachments in line with earlier plans took control over some objects, like the Seville radio. Confusion ruled, and some detachments changed sides either willingly, or by mistake.