What was the Aragon Offensive?
The Aragon Offensive was the Nationalist attack launched on 7 March 1938, barely three weeks after the Republican defeat at Teruel. Franco's armies broke through the exhausted Republican front in Aragon, swept east across the Ebro valley and on 15 April reached the Mediterranean at Vinaròs, cutting Republican Spain in two. The offensive ended on 19 April, and the Republic never fully recovered.1
The Virtual Spanish Civil War project calls the Aragon Offensive hugely successful for Franco and an almost mortal blow to the Republic, one from which it never completely recovered. In six weeks the Nationalists advanced from the Aragon front to the sea and left Catalonia isolated from Madrid and Valencia.2
After Teruel
The Republic had spent the winter fighting for Teruel, and by late February it had lost the town. On the Aragon front the Republican troops were exhausted; many had never seen battle, half had no weapons, and the Nationalists now had clear control of the air. The Republican command expected Franco to return to his old plan of attacking Madrid through Guadalajara, and believed his troops were as worn out as its own. They were wrong.3
According to the lawyer and writer Javier García de Gabiola in Muy Interesante, the Republican chief of staff Vicente Rojo had also pulled three of his nine army corps out of the line to rebuild them or hold them in reserve for Madrid. Against 13 Republican divisions, about 100,000 men, General Fidel Dávila could now throw 22 Nationalist divisions, about 220,000, with some 400 aircraft against about 250.4
The front gives way
The offensive opened on 7 March just south of the Ebro, where the Nationalist superiority was greatest. Yagüe's Moroccan Corps, García Valiño's troops and the Italian CTV, nine divisions in all, fell on three Republican divisions spread thin along a wide front; after a bombardment by some 470 guns the line collapsed. Belchite was lost, and the British Battalion of the International Brigades was forced into a fighting retreat through Belchite, Lecera, Vinaceite and Caspe, which fell by 15 March.5
Rojo threw his reserves at the gap, first on the Martín river and then on the Guadalope, where the Nationalists reached Alcañiz on 14 March. Then Yagüe crossed to the north bank of the Ebro, and on 15 March the corps of Navarre and Aragon attacked between Huesca and Zaragoza. The front north of the river broke too, and a Republican division was cut off in a pocket in the Pyrenees at Bielsa. Many Republican soldiers fought bravely, the worn-down International Brigades above all, but there was also mass desertion, and Nationalist speed and air power kept breaking every new line.6
To the sea
By the end of March the Nationalists had crossed the Cinca and taken Monzón and Fraga, and on 3 April Yagüe took Lleida. The same day, south of the Ebro, the 1st Navarre Division took Gandesa behind the Republican line. The British Battalion, reduced to about eighty men after being caught by Italian tanks it mistook for Republican ones, fell back through Gandesa and over the Ebro at Cherta, where many soldiers trapped on the wrong bank were captured or drowned trying to swim the river.7
Farther south, General Aranda's troops took Morella and broke the last Republican line toward the coast. On Good Friday, 15 April 1938, Carlist soldiers of the 1st and 4th Navarre Divisions reached the Mediterranean at Vinaròs after 36 days of fighting. García de Gabiola puts Republican losses at about 60,000.8
A Republic cut in two
The offensive was accompanied by heavy air raids on towns in Valencia and Catalonia meant to terrorize civilians; Mussolini's bombing of Barcelona from 16 to 18 March killed more than 1,000 people. The defeat also shook the government of Juan Negrín: the defense minister Indalecio Prieto, believing the war lost, left the cabinet, and resentment of Communist power in the Popular Army began to split the Republicans.9
If Franco had marched straight on Catalonia, the Virtual Spanish Civil War notes, he could have taken it easily. Instead he turned south against Valencia, a decision much criticized since. García de Gabiola writes that Yagüe had urged an advance from Lleida to Barcelona; the attack on Valencia was stopped some 40 kilometers short of the city, and in July Rojo struck back across the Ebro. The Republic survived another year, but its territory was now split in two, and it never regained the initiative.10 › Catalonia Offensive, 1938 to 1939
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”; Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”. ↩
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”; Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”. ↩
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”. ↩
- Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”. ↩
- Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”; International Brigade Memorial Trust, “The retreat through Aragon”. ↩
- Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”; The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”. ↩
- Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”; International Brigade Memorial Trust, “The retreat through Aragon”. ↩
- Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”; The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”. ↩
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”. ↩
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”; Javier García de Gabiola, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana”. ↩
Sources
- The Virtual Spanish Civil War, “Francoist Soldiers Reach the Mediterranean”
- Javier García de Gabiola, Muy Interesante, “La batalla de Valencia, la última victoria republicana” (in Spanish)
- International Brigade Memorial Trust, “The retreat through Aragon”
