In the midst of the Pyrenees only 15 mi. south of the French border lies the town of Jaca, which has been in Rightist hands for the past 15 months. Furiously soldiers were digging in Jaca last week, building pill boxes, establishing munition dumps. After nearly a week's methodical advance, Leftist troops were less than two miles away, and Jaca is a key point on one of the three railroads from France into Spain.
Capture of Jaca would not only give the Leftists control of two of these lines, tremendous advantage should France make good her repeated threat to open the frontier for volunteers and munitions, but it would also make a flank attack on the Rightist stronghold of Saragossa possible. To Generalissimo Franco the threat to Jaca had an even gloomier significance: it meant that the Aragon Front, consistently the quietest sector in the entire war, had been kicked into action by the energetic Negrin Government at Valencia. It meant that undisciplined malingering Leftist militiamen who had been quite content to play football with their adversaries between the lines have been replaced by trained troops eager to fight. Up to the breach Caudillo ("Chief") Franco rushed divisions of Italians that would have had more than enough to do on any one of Spain's four other fronts last week.
Dividing Spain's war into five "fronts": Aragon, Teruel, Madrid, Estremadura and Andalusia (see map) is merely a journalistic device that has been adopted by both sides. There is a sixth and quite separate front, that in the province of Asturias on the Bay of Biscay where last week Rightists were crawling over tremendous mountains ever closer to Leftist Gijón, but the five consecutive fronts form a writhing battle line that snakes a full 1,000 mi. from the French frontier near Jaca round Madrid and ends in the Mediterranean Sea between Málaga and Alicante. There are about 500,000 troops on each side to defend this line and the country behind it, and more of the 1,000 mi. is fortified and actually entrenched than these figures would indicate.
Front No. 1. From the French frontier to a few miles north of Huesca, there were until three weeks ago few formal fortifications, no trenches on this, the most scandalously inactive of all Spanish fronts. Last week's offensive has changed all that, but there is still no trench system. Defense is a matter of individual strong points and gun emplacements among the rocky precipitous hills. From ten miles north of Huesca half way down to Teruel, trenches begin in earnest. They have been dug with great enthusiasm, in systems two and three lines deep, but with little science. Dugouts are improperly constructed, firesteps and proper bays are lacking, connecting trenches are generally at the wrong angle, but since there has been practically no action on this sector for months it makes little difference.