9. A Theater of Diplomacy: Cipriano de Rivas Cherif (1891–1967) and the Spanish Civil War

Michael Hahn

Cipriano de Rivas Cherif’s personal testimony of the outbreak of the civil war ofers a glimpse into the dramatic turmoil that hit Spain in July 1936. Since February 1936, he had been on tour with Margarita Xirgu’s theater company in Mexico and Cuba—performing Federico García Lorca’s Yerma (1934) and Doña Rosita la soltera o el lenguaje de las fores (1935), among others—when, in July, both personal and professional reasons led him to cut short his participation in the tour. On July 18, 1936, with reports of a military uprising in North Africa reaching him at the port in Veracruz, Mexico, Rivas Cherif embarked on a steam ship bound for Bilbao, Spain. He might have reconsidered had he known how quickly the uprising would become a threat to him and his wife personally. Upon listening to Dolores Ibárruri La Pasionaria’s July 19 radio address,[1] he enthusiastically had a radiogram transmitted to her.[2] It would almost be his undoing: Published by Mundo Obrero,[3] the periodical of Spain’s Communist Party, the insurgents utilized it to identify and track the ship. The Cristóbal Colón was forced on an odyssey via Southampton, Le Havre, and Saint-Nazaire until she (dubbed “Spain’s ‘Flying Dutchman’” by the British press) fnally dropped anchor in Cardif on September 27, 1936.[4] The incident suddenly made President Manuel Azaña (1880–1940) aware of the extent to which his brother-in-law was at risk in the impending war.

Diplomacy

In order to comply with the President’s request that he and his family remain outside the country for security reasons, Rivas Cherif seized the opportunity—against his own will, as he repeatedly emphasized—to enter the diplomatic service,[5] a feld into which he had sought admission already as a young law graduate,[6] then (and now?) in the hopes of being able to “compaginar un servicio público resguardando mi independencia artística como escritor.”[7] Thus, on September 6, 1936—despite his lack of any relevant political experience whatsoever—Cipriano de Rivas Cherif was catapulted into a politically sensitive government position in Geneva, Switzerland.[8]

It was not the frst time the relationship with Azaña set the course for Rivas Cherif’s future career. In a 1938 diary entry, Rivas Cherif observed that it was “el encuentro” with Azaña that “fjó mis designios en la vocación literaria.”[9] In 1920, the two close friends had co-founded the literary journal La Pluma, ultimately enabling Cipriano’s entry into the theater business with his avantgarde Teatro de la Escuela Nueva.[10] Now, in 1936, the outbreak of the Spanish War once again closely linked their professional fates: During his term as Consul-General and Secretary of the Spanish Delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, Rivas Cherif remained in close telephone contact with Azaña, “a temporadas casi a diario.”[11] After his dismissal in May 1938, he accepted a protocol post in Azaña’s immediate vicinity in Barcelona, serving as Introducer to Ambassadors and Head of the Diplomatic Household of the Presidency of the Republic until their joint emigration to France in February 1939.

The 1936 military coup had led to a massive resignation of ofcials from the diplomatic service. By the end of the year, of the 390 diplomats on the Foreign Ministry’s payroll, only fewer than 150 remained in service. By 1939, nearly 90 percent of the staf had resigned.[12] In order to defend its “derecho a no ser invadido, ni sojuzgado por ejércitos extranjeros” in a war denounced by Azaña as the greatest political crime since the partition of Poland in the eighteenth century,[13] the Republic was in dire need of “improvised” diplomats like Rivas Cherif.

In this respect, the importance of Geneva for the Republic’s diplomatic endeavors should not be underestimated. It was, of course, clear that sanctions were out of the question. With conservative governments at the helm of the overwhelming majority of the member states,[14] achieving the unanimity required for League of Nations Council decisions (Covenant, Art. 5) was practically impossible from the outset. Manuel Azaña, who characterized the League of Nations Council meetings as “comedia,” had no illusions about the fact that it was not the law but rather the law of the strongest that applied in Geneva: “el motivo de que Ginebra . . . se desentienda de nuestro pleito, es primeramente la debilidad de España.”[15] It was France and the United Kingdom, its two most infuential members—themselves interested in minimizing consideration of the war in the League of Nations[16]—on which he had pinned his hopes.[17] Still, the League provided valuable opportunities for high-level multilateral negotiation and the public exertion of pressure on its member states.[18] And since the League was the only international forum to which Madrid had access at the time, the question arises as to why the Republic did not establish a permanent Spanish representation there until November 1938.

Fault Lines Within the Republican Faction

Rivas Cherif’s correspondence with superior ofcials in the Spanish government reveals glaring discrepancies among the Republican leadership regarding the foreign policy to be pursued. Convinced that the war could not be won militarily, President Azaña from the beginning saw international mediation as the only means of preserving the Republic—namely a joint agreement over the withdrawal of foreign troops, a ceasefre, and the implementation of a (supervised) plebiscite on the country’s future constitution.[19]

On the other hand, the duo in charge of the government’s foreign policy— Julio Álvarez del Vayo, Foreign Minister (September 1936–May 1937; April 1938–March 1939),[20] and Pablo de Azcárate, the Spanish ambassador in London (September 1936–February 1939)—not only considered any mediation strategy doomed to failure from the outset as long as Franco could count on substantial help from Germany and Italy[21] but also feared the signal of military weakness that would emanate from a mediation request by the Republic.[22] For Álvarez del Vayo, a negotiated peace was virtually tantamount to surrender.[23] Prime Ministers Francisco Largo Caballero (September 1936–May 1937) and Juan Negrín (May 1937–March 1939) opted for continued resistance, with a view to introducing the Spanish confict into a European war.[24]

Under the Republican constitution of 1931, the President of the Republic did not have the appropriate executive powers to override the government’s decisions. Azaña’s mediation attempt through Bosch Gimpera in London in the fall of 1936 was thus judged correctly (by Azcárate) as “escandalosamente anticonstitucional.”[25] It was the frst of numerous to follow; each and every one carried out without the knowledge or even support of the government.[26] The only constitutional possibility for the President of the Republic to infuence Spanish government policy was through his power to freely dismiss the Prime Minister (Art. 75)—a right Azaña, however, did not dare to utilize against Negrín.[27] In turn, the head of government did not shy away from putting the President in his constitutional place: “[si] no se sigue su parecer, es que no ha convencido al jefe del Gobierno, que es el responsable. Así es la Constitución.”[28]

Thus, the President of the Republic’s relationship with both of his Prime Ministers was fractured: with regard to Francisco Largo Caballero, he had the “impresión de que estoy hablando a un muerto.”[29] Juan Negrín, in turn, is said to have even accused Azaña of an “indiferencia por la suerte de España.”[30] Azaña was isolated.

Rivas Cherif, the Consul-General in Geneva

One level below in the hierarchy, the same irreconcilable diferences separated Álvarez del Vayo and Azcárate, on the one hand, and Rivas Cherif, on the other hand. In letters to his friend Foreign Minister José Giral (May 1937– April 1938), a frustrated Rivas Cherif qualifes Álvarez del Vayo’s policy as “simplemente periodística,”[31] as “espectáculo de la incompetencia unida a la mala fé,”[32] and complains that his own role in Geneva under Álvarez del Vayo was reduced to that of a mere “observador” who never received “un mínimum de instrucciones.”[33] His main allegation against Álvarez del Vayo, apart from his “supeditación a los designios del partido comunista español”[34] and his tendency to whitewash his Genevan performances[35]: the “alarde de independencia personal . . . eludiendo la información, el consejo, e incluso el cumplimiento de orientaciones manifestas por el Presidente de la República.”[36]

Yet, rather than at Álvarez del Vayo and Azcárate, it seems that the accusation of high-handed action must be leveled at the Consul-General himself, who quite frankly confessed to Negrín his “deseo de servir a la República en la persona—que siempre he puesto por delante de cualquier entelequia ni idea—de mi hermano el Presidente.”[37] Sharing—and encouraging[38]— Azaña’s stance on foreign politics, the jurist Rivas Cherif concluded from the President’s constitutional power to “declarar la guerra . . . y frmar la paz” (Art. 76 lit. a)[39] that “[le] competen directamente las decisiones últimas de la guerra y la paz,”[40] a right, he believed, of which his brother-in-law had been deprived by self-opinionated government action. “Tuerto,” he felt distressed at “la cegedad de los demás”[41]—and compelled but also entitled to take action on his own initiative,[42] even if this was against the will of his superiors. Consequently, the Consul-General’s legitimacy to speak for the Spanish government was, of course, increasingly called into question.

Increasingly faced with Azaña’s, and his own, political isolation, the C onsul-General seems to have indulged more and more frequently in rash statements or even outbursts of temper. Already in November 1937, Azcárate had pointed out to Foreign Minister Giral that “se ve demasiado claramente que es un hombre que ha perdido el control de su propia conducta.”[43] In January 1938, Rivas Cherif instructed Antoni Fabra Rivas, the Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary in Bern, in front of several witnesses and “con exaltación inexplicable” that “ya se había cargado a un Ministro de Estado . . . y que, si se presentaba el caso, lo mismo le pasaría a los otros”—a behavior denounced by Álvarez del Vayo as absolutely “intolerable” form of a “nuevo caciquismo” and “política de ‘clan.’”[44] The fnal impetus for Rivas Cherif’s dismissal on May 9, 1938,[45] was yet another secret exploration of the chances of an armistice with foreign diplomats, but this time, it fltered through to the British and American press:

Two League delegates told the British United Press that Señor Rivas Cherif had suggested to them that some of the Latin-American nations might propose mediation and take an active part in it. The delegates thought he was speaking on behalf of President Azaña. They assumed, however, he was acting without the knowledge of Señor Del Vayo, the Foreign Minister, or Dr. Negrín, the Premier, who, it is understood, favour fghting to the end. Señor Rivas Cherif suggested that Latin-American members of the League should propose to the President of the Council that certain foreign countries should mediate to arrange an armistice. The Council would then authorize mediation. It is understood that Señor Rivas Cherif suggested that foreign Powers might aid in arranging a plebiscite in Spain. As far as can be ascertained none of the delegates approached

agreed to act upon these suggestions. Two of them suggested that the Consul-General should approach foreign Governments through ordinary diplomatic channels.[46]

Despite Rivas Cherif’s swift denial “that he has . . . taken any initiative in regard to mediation in Spain,”[47] the Foreign Minister—about to attend a Council meeting in Geneva—was snubbed. The Consul-General had become untenable; his “promotion” to Barcelona[48] was no more than a face-saving measure.[49]

Conclusion

How helpful was the “improvised” diplomat Rivas Cherif to the Republic? Regardless of the question of whether the Republican leadership should indeed have made a greater efort to mediate internationally, what can be said is that Rivas Cherif’s repeated solo actions in that matter signifcantly contributed to the Republic’s failure to speak with one voice to France and the United Kingdom, which by necessity weakened any foreign policy strategy it pursued.[50] Internally, Rivas Cherif’s at times somewhat pompous manner and his lengthy letters, not always kept in a professional tone,[51] ultimately only fueled the confict between the President of the Republic and the government instead of contributing constructively to its resolution. The latter would have required a basis of personal trust between the ConsulGeneral and the decision-makers in the government, something that quite obviously had already become illusory in the spring of 1937.[52] The deference to Azaña—whom Rivas Cherif frequently brought into play himself, for instance, when reminding Giral of his “aptitud, singularmente especial” for the post in Geneva[53]—unduly perpetuated this disruptive state of afairs, resulting in an “evidente lastre de peso para los intereses de la República y la credibilidad del Gobierno en el exterior.”[54] Without this mixing of the political and the private, it is probable that a delegado permanente to the League of Nations would have been appointed well before November 1938.[55]

Theater

For the man considered to be Spain’s frst theater director in the modern sense of the word,[56] who embodied the spirit of the Republic’s theatrical renewal like few others,[57] the outbreak of the civil war thus in many respects marked a turning point. In 1933, Cipriano de Rivas Cherif had founded the Teatro Escuela de Arte (TEA), Spain’s frst modern theater school, “probablemente la propuesta renovadora de más aliento en la España de los años treinta.”[58] In line with its founder’s ideal of “un teatro con savia política y social y en el cual los problemas del individuo estén en íntima relación con la inquietud colectiva de la época,”[59] the TEA was conceived both as a school for all professions related to theatrical performance and as a laboratory of scenic experiments, serving, in some respects, as a model for María Teresa León’s Teatro de Arte y Propaganda,[60] arguably the most valuable political theater to be seen in Madrid during the war.[61] The school was continued by Rivas Cherif’s former students. Still accepting new actors and actresses in the fall of 1937, there is evidence of theater performances at the front as well as in a hospital of the International Brigade.

Yet staying in touch with his students was by far not the Consul-General’s only way of connecting with theater in those years. In January and May 1937, Rivas Cherif gave “cultural propaganda” lectures on contemporary Spanish theater in Brussels and Amsterdam.[62] From March to June 1937, he translated the satirical drama Angelica by Leo Ferrero, whose family he had befriended in Geneva; while not in Spain, the play premiered in Argentina in August 1938.[63] In September 1937, Rivas Cherif attended the V Soviet Theater Festival in Moscow at the head of a delegation on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Public Education.[64] The delegation also included Miguel Hernández, who in the Soviet Union could fnd no trace of that “humanidad automática, mecanizada, sorda por indiferencia egoista al clamor de los pueblos atropellados” he had observed elsewhere.[65] One particular note from him from Moscow seems to convey in an exact manner Rivas Cherif’s Genevan experience of ignorance and powerlessness that he in Moscow undoubtedly shared with his compatriots:

A veces son ministros diplomáticos, relaciones exteriores, y a veces la vida, la muerte de millones de hombres depende de una buena digestión de una cena en Ginebra—todo lo emprenden, todo lo solventan con un aire aburrido de elegancia marchita.[66] (Sometimes it is diplomatic ministers, foreign relations, and sometimes the life, the death of millions of men depends on a good digestion of a dinner in Geneva—everything they undertake, everything they solve with a dull air of withering elegance.)

In the fall of 1937, Rivas Cherif participated in the board meetings of the newly established Consejo Central del Teatro in Valencia, with Antonio Machado and María Teresa León as vice presidents, Max Aub as secretary, and Benavente, Alberti, and Rivas Cherif as members of the advisory board.[67] As late as January 1939, Rivas Cherif worked on an adaptation of Mariana Pineda and (again) Fuenteovejuna, still under the impression of a performance he had seen in Paris on November 4, 1937, with a stunning Germaine Montero as Laurencia, and no doubt in an efort to counteract its appropriation by the insurgents as “national drama par excellence.”[68] It was one of the last plays he had staged in Spain, in commemoration of the third centenary of Lope de Vega’s death in 1935.[69]

At the turn of the year 1937/38, Rivas Cherif writes in his diary: “Me acucia de nuevo, y ahora creo que con ímpetu decidido la gana de escribir.”[70] And indeed, in the dire months to follow, literary writing seems to have helped him “[d]escans[ar] los nervios” and “matar la inquietud.”[71] From July 1937 to September 1938, he worked on a play called La piedra en el lago[72]; in March 1938, he wrote on an unspecifed novel. In July 1938, we fnd a frst reference to his drama Comedia sin máscara de la Vera Pax,[73] which he did not fnish until 1945. In September 1939—already in French exile—he began working on his play Práxedes en persona, conceived as a sequel to his drama Un sueño de la razón (1928).[74]

None of these projects would ever be published or performed on stage in his lifetime. In July 1940, Cipriano de Rivas Cherif was apprehended in Gironde near Bordeaux by the Gestapo and Spanish police, transferred to Spain, and sentenced to death by an ad hoc court, a sentence that, after Azaña’s sudden death in November 1940, was commuted to thirty years of imprisonment. Until his release in March 1946, Rivas Cherif would spend nearly six years in various prisons. Here again, it was almost frenetic reading and writing in a kind of “fuga psicológica” that enabled Rivas Cherif to overcome what he called “contingencia política.”[75] In the prison of El Dueso in Cantabria—where Antonio Buero Vallejo was also held prisoner—Rivas Cherif even resumed his directing activities, staging between 1942 and 1945 a total of twenty works with the actor-prisoners of the Teatro Escuela del Dueso.[76]

The Play ¿Qué quiere decir Irene? (1941)

In the prison of El Puerto de Santa María in Cádiz, where at least 194 prisoners died of a typhus outbreak that same year,[77] Rivas Cherif wrote the anti-war drama ¿Qué quiere decir Irene? It is this “fabula alegórica,” frst published in 2013[78] and premiered as a staged reading in Madrid in 2019, in which Rivas Cherif most vividly processed his experiences as a diplomat during the civil war.

The plot of the two-act drama is told quickly: Irene, the mysterious fgure at the center of the play, has been forced to fee from Greece to fctitious “Neutralia,” where she seeks asylum from the war. She fnds shelter in the comfortable “Guillermo Hotel” of the owner of the same name and soon fnds herself surrounded by the other hotel guests. Meanwhile, no one seems to understand her. The recurring question in the play, “¿Qué quiere decir Irene?” (What does Irene mean?), is asked at least six times by diferent characters and remains unanswered until the end.

While it is true that the paratext does mark the theme as timeless—“Época moderna y aun modernísima; pero sin tiempo fjo en el pasado, el presente o el futuro”[79]—there are several references that unmistakably situate the drama in Rivas Cherif’s Genevan period: the setting in the “Guillermo Hotel” (the lake, the Alps, the cuckoo clock) but even more so the dispute between the two half-brothers Mario and Sila, whose choice of name clearly alludes to the feud between Sila and Gaio Mario in the Roman Civil War. In the play, the confrontation between the two eventually turns into a “ciego combate a puros palos,” a blind fght with plain sticks, a fght that kills in the name of peace— with both Mario and Sila invoking “Irene” and claiming her as their own:

Mario. ¡ Por tu libertad combatiré en mar y tierra, allí donde se encuentre tu enemigo! Irene. ¡No por Dios! Sila. Por tu seguridad lucharé hasta que reines sobre el haz de la tierra. . . . (Salen afuera desafados.) Irene. ¡Oid! ¡Escuchadme! . . . Irene. Por defender mi tranquilidad se matan los hombres.

(Mario. F or your freedom I will fght on land and sea, wherever your enemy is! Irene. Not for God’s sake! Sila. For your safety I’ll fght until you reign over the face of the earth. . . . (They go out in defance.) Irene. Listen! Listen to me! . . . Irene. Men kill each other to defend my peace of mind.)

Through the other hotel guests, including the Swiss “Guillermo Hotel,” the English “Miss Albion,” and “Professor Whitehouse” as President of the United States, Rivas Cherif reconstructs a veritable “League of Nations”—of bystanders—in neutral Switzerland. But instead of pursuing a common goal, which in the case of the League of Nations, at least according to its Covenant, would be “to achieve international peace and security,” these fgures are only concerned with themselves: They are rather (or this is how they are introduced) members of a poker game who ponder over their respective stakes and risks. Throughout the play, there is talk of “cuentas claras,” of “grandes propinas,” and “dólares oro,” of stock exchange prices and currency exchange rates.[80] Needless to say, the hotel guests do not intervene in the increasingly bitter argument between Mario and Sila; it is a question that simply does not arise.

The most prominent fgure in this series of bystanders is the businessman Guillermo-Hotel, CEO of “el consorcio bancario-turístico más acreditado de Neutralia.”[81] Solely concerned with fnancial proft-making, he does not bother at all with idealistic or humanitarian considerations; seeing no monetary value in it, he rejects even the admission of war refugees. Even though this fgure is, of course, a bit on the nose, parallels can be drawn to the interest-led policy of the Swiss government during the Spanish Civil War. Despite its ofcial statement of strict neutrality, the Swiss federal council took measures that clearly favored the party of the insurgents.[82] While refusing to join the non-intervention agreement initiated by the French Front Populaire government, Switzerland, under Italian infuence, nevertheless banned all arms exports to Spain (a ban that hit the Republic particularly hard), prohibited all expressions of solidarity by its citizens, and confscated any domestically printed propaganda material of communist, anarchic, antimilitarist, or anti-religious nature. Meanwhile, as early as mid-1937, it established a trade mission in Salamanca to represent its interests in Francoist Spain. In late 1938, the Swiss government made a signifcant contribution to the nationalist war efort through its approval of a loan from the Swiss Bank Corporation, thus distinguishing itself notably from other democratic countries.[83]

The appearance of Professor Whitehouse, whose character description reads: “como cualquier presidente des los EEUU de América, cuando llevaban sombrero gris de copa,”[84] is marked by ignorance to a similar extent. In the dramatic situation in which Irene fnds herself, he is most concerned about the dollar exchange rate. Whitehouse has made the trip to war-ridden Europe solely for one reason: to participate in a chess tournament. To him, the war is an abstraction, something that does not remotely afect him—an attitude that, in turn, clearly points to the isolationism of the United States of America between World War I and World War II and the view, widespread among historians, that President Roosevelt either did not care about the Spanish Civil War or had to remain inactive due to domestic and international constraints[85]:

Irene (. . . se precipita a los pies de Whitehouse): ¡Sálveme usted! El Profesor (Perplejo y haciendo intención de levantarla del suelo): ¿Qué

quiere decir? El guía: Irene. El Profesor: ¿Irene? Irene: Le ruego que me escuche a mí; que no dé oídos a quienes pretenden hablar en mi nombre. . . .

(Irene (. . . rushes to Whitehouse’s feet): Save me! Prof. Whitehouse (Perplexed and intending to lift her of the ground): What

do you mean? The Guide: Irene. Prof. Whitehouse: Irene? Irene: I beg you to listen to me; do not listen to those who pretend to speak in my name.)

The US President does not even begin to comprehend Irene’s request for help. It fades away, unheard, in the hubbub of the conversation, and Professor Whitehouse ends up playing chess against himself. By placing the tragedy inherent in Irene’s fate in juxtaposition with comic elements from the commedia dell’arte tradition, the drama ultimately produces the efect of radical disillusionment.

With Irene appearing at the center of the drama as a concept whose very meaning has been lost to those involved, the drama denounces all those who wage or permit war in the name of peace. Regarding the Spanish Civil War, this of course refers frst and foremost to Francisco Franco himself, who in July 1936 told a US journalist that “he would kill half of Spain if necessary to pacify the country.”[86] But it also points to Great Britain and France, who, mindful of their own interests, tolerated “breaches of international law on a wide scale . . . in what was assumed to be the general interest of peace.”[87] In November 1937, sixteen months after the breakout of the Spanish War, the French Prime Minister commented to his British counterpart that their two countries “could congratulate themselves that their Spanish policy had undoubtedly helped them to pass a very difcult year without a breach of the peace” (!).[88]

But above all, the drama can be considered an homage to Manuel Azaña,[89] who deliberately put precisely this—peace—at the top of the famous tricolon with which he fnished his speech on the occasion of the second anniversary of the outbreak of the civil war: “Paz, piedad y perdón.”[90] He did this even against ferce opposition in his own ranks. In its reprint of the speech, the newspaper El Socialista suppressed the word “paz”[91]; it was a word that was simply too problematic to print at the time. In his Causas de la guerra de España, Azaña writes: “Es seguro que si todas las potencias europeas hubiesen tenido en aquella ocasión una conciencia pacífca y una percepción desinteresada de sus deberes de solidaridad humana, la guerra española habría sido ahogada en sus orígenes.” (It is certain that if all European powers had had on that occasion a peaceful conscience and a disinterested perception of their duties of human solidarity, the Spanish war would have been stifed at its origins.)[92]

The last sentence of the drama is addressed directly to the audience. It reads:

“Irene, quiere decir la Paz.” (Irene means peace.)

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— June 24, 1937. Archivo Histórico Nacional, DIVERSOS-JOSE_GIRAL, 17, n. 79.

— August 8, 1937. Archivo Histórico Nacional, DIVERSOS-JOSE_GIRAL, 17, n. 83.

— n.d. Archivo Histórico Nacional, DIVERSOS-JOSE_GIRAL, 17, n. 84.

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— November 12, 1937. Archivo Histórico Nacional, DIVERSOS-JOSE_GIRAL, 17, n. 86.

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