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Following orders from the conspirators, Francisco Franco flew from the Canaries to Morocco, where he arrested and promptly shot Leftist sympathizers, and assumed the title of High Commissioner. Three days after the rebellion started its official leader, General Sanjurjo, was killed in an airplane accident over Lisbon. In the emergency, Francisco Franco, who had kept the revolution alive after its first setback by pouring in Moors and munitions from across the Straits of Gibraltar, became generalissimo in name as well as fact.
Salamanca. The Franco dictatorship was proclaimed at the Gothic walled city of Burgos on July 23, 1936. Since then the Caudillo has moved his headquarters and the military and diplomatic bureaus of his government about 180 miles southwest to golden Salamanca. Salamanca is only 100 miles from Madrid with excellent highway communications to Avila, advance base for the Madrid front, and has direct rail connections with Portugal, a useful back door for German advisers who wish to avoid passing through France. Into this city whose normal population is less than 25,000, over 50,000 people have been crowded. In its one modern hostelry, the flag bedecked Grand Hotel,* none but German and Italian staff officers and the most potent politicos may dream of finding a room. Humble war correspondents and civilians with urgent business at headquarters are lucky to find a cot in a shoe-store.
El Caudillo himself is comfortably established in the Bishop of Salamanca's palace opposite the west front of the Cathedral. Here he lives with his handsome wife Carmen, whom he married eleven years ago while on duty in Oviedo, and his daughter Carmencita, who is two years younger than Britain's Princess Elizabeth. Nine months ago the Bureau for Press & Propaganda issued an appeal signed by Dona Carmencita to all other nine-year-olds to pray for peace and papa's victory. Beyond that she has avoided the limelight. Dona Carmen Polo de Franco is patron of the Rightist Red Cross, frequently officiates at charity bullfights.
Also in the Bishop's palace are the offices of the general staff. Few headquarters were ever more carefully guarded. Before it every morning is held a ceremonial guard mount. In turn, companies of Regulars, Moors, Carlists, Falangists. Revisionists take this guard, placing sentries at every corner of the building. No matter who has the office guard there are always on outside duty, in addition: two city police, with rifles; two tricorne-hatted civil guards, with rifles; two white robed Moors, with rifles; assorted plainclothesmen, with revolvers. Vigilance does not stop there. Inside the building, in the large bare room that was once the Bishop's and is now the Caudillo's anteroom there hangs an arresting poster: Silence, enemy ears are listening!