Apart from the conquest of Malaga, little was achieved by the insurgents in the winter of 1936-7, two attempts made in February to cut the roads to Madrid (on the river Jarama) and March (near Guadalajara) conspicuously fail ing. But in April 1937 a new and successful offensive began in the Basque country, west of San Sebastian, with Bilbao as its first objective. The main attack came from the south: Durango, Eibar and Guernica, bombed and shelled, fell quickly, though it took seven weeks more to shatter the "iron ring" of defences around Bilbao. Two months after the Basque capital had fallen (June 19) and the first of Spain's two autonomous regions had become re-centralized, a lightning attack, also from the south, gave the Nationalists the port of Santander in only ten days (August 25). Pressing westward, they were in Asturias by the beginning of September. Gijon, the last town to hold out in the north, fell on October 21.
Just over a year earlier, on Oct. 1, 1936, General Franco had assumed the headship of Na tionalist Spain. He had then outlined features of his proposed "broadly totalitarian" rule : abolition of popular suffrage and re gional autonomy; equitable and graduated taxation; disestablish ment of the Church, complete religious tolerance and a new Con cordat with Rome ; and, in foreign affairs, avoidance of "Sovietic contacts" and preferential treatment for "nations of related race, language or ideology." A "Technical Council of State" was set up, to be succeeded in January 1938 by a Cabinet on the Euro pean pattern. On April 19, 1937, the two main Nationalist groups —Phalangist and Traditionalists—were fused into a single party (Falange Espanola Tradicionalista) and all other political parties dissolved. In the following August the organization of F.E.T. was completed by the creation of a National Council of some fifty members and a powerful Junta Politica. Much constructive work was done even during the War, a notable enactment being the La bour Charter (March 9, 1938), which, under such captions as "Work for all," "Remuneration and security," "Protection and Production," gave the worker an undertaking (perhaps a little vaguely worded) that the New State had not come simply to re store the ancien regime. Its agrarian policy, for example, was to provide a living wage for every labourer, "to give every peasant family a small holding," and to improve sanitary and housing con ditions in the villages. But little idea of how this and other aims were to be accomplished was at this time given. Another feature of the Labour Charter was the creation of Vertical Syndicates, combining into one organism, under State direction, all the ele ments functioning within a single service or branch of production.
This department earned for the New State the adjective "Na tional-Syndicalist." Crises Among the Republicans.—Though its enemies de lighted to represent the New State as rent by internal strife, it held together admirably throughout the war and during the initial period of reconstruction. The Popular Front also sunk its differ ences creditably while faced with the common enemy, but, these being far more fundamental than those of the Nationalists, there were serious clashes. A miniature Civil War caused by an An archo-Syndicalist rising raged for a week in Barcelona (May 3-1o, 1937) and was followed by a major political crisis in the Valen cian government; from the new Cabinet, headed by Dr. Negrin (who succeeded Sr. Largo Caballero and held office till nearly the end of the war), Anarcho-Syndicalists were eliminated and re mained unrepresented until April 1938. The Generalitat under went numerous crises on a smaller scale (six between September 1936 and June 1937 alone), due also principally to the clash of centralizing and decentralizing groups, though, as the combat be came fiercer, these drew more closely together. Large-scale plots and spy trials were also frequent, some of them implicating the anomalously placed Trotskyists, whose group, known as the P.O.U.M., was the Cinderella of the Republican family.
By the end of the first year of the war, General Franco could claim 35 of Spain's 5o provincial capitals, 14 out of her 22 million inhabitants and 310, 000 of her 504,000 kilometres of territory. But the Republicans had as yet hardly organized their "New Army" and the struggle was far from over. The loss of the north and consequent unifica tion of the front simplified their practical problems; and when, on Dec. 4, 1937, they began an unexpected offensive in Aragon, it won them the city of Teruel (Jan. 9, 1938)—almost their first, and their last, important gain—which they lost again on February 22. With the coming of spring in their favour the Nationalists pressed this advantage, raised the siege of Huesca, took Barbastro, penetrated into Catalonia, captured (April 3) the capital of its most westerly province, Lerida, and thence pursued the enemy as far up the Segre valley as Tremp. The climax of an almost simul taneous push farther south came on April 15, when Nationalist troops reached the Mediterranean, where they soon carved them selves a corridor forty miles wide, threatening, on the south, Cas tellon, which fell on June 14, and on the north Tortosa, which held out till the following January. Republican Spain was thus cut in two, and its government, now at Barcelona, deputed General Miaja, "the defender of Madrid," to act as civil and military gov ernor of its central and southern territory.