Mallorca And War: The Germans

In the article a couple of days ago about Gertrude Stein's time in Mallorca during the Great War, I mentioned the German ship the "Fangturm". Having been abandoned in Palma's port at the start of the war, work commenced on getting it shipshape when the Verdun battle began, only for the work to later cease. But whatever happened to the ship? After its half and incomplete paint job, it was allowed to rust away even more. In 1919, as part of reparations under the Treaty of Versailles, the Spanish navy seized the ship and handed it over to the care of the French consul. By then it was in such a poor state that it had to be towed to Marseille.

The ship was to be sold in 1921 to a Belgian company. It was renamed the "SS Antverpia" and eventually met its end when it was bombed by German aircraft in Boulogne harbour in 1940. Originally a German cargo ship, albeit one that was built by Swan Hunter, its fate was finally sealed by a German bomb.

The story of the "Fangturm" is one of only a few remnants of the wider story of Mallorca during World War One as told from the German side. Gertrude Stein's account of the ship left out plenty of detail. She implied that some of the crew had "gotten away" to Barcelona. In fact, it seems that they all got away, instructed to report for military service and ferried to Barcelona to start their journey to Germany. The German consul in Mallorca, Alfred Müller, issued an order: "Subjects of the German Reich, who are obliged to undertake military service, must present themselves without delay for this purpose to the Imperial German Consulate in Calle Concepción 82".

Stein had also understated the ship's function (or perhaps she had been sarcastic, and it is more than likely that she had been). Rather than selling pins and needles in the Mediterranean, the "Fangturm" was one of a fleet of large cargo carriers which bore similar names. It had been en route from New York to India when it headed to Palma to seek a safe haven just as war was breaking out. The crew had initially not known what to do. When they were ordered to report for military service, they did know, and so the ship was left behind.

Other Germans of military age were also obliged to leave and join up. The "Ultima Hora" newspaper referred to "our friend", a Herr Schmidt, a local silversmith, who had no choice but to report for service with an infantry battalion. The Germans who remained, those who were too old for service, must, one imagines, have been those who started painting the "Fangturm". It's hard to know who else would have done.

What seems clear is that there was no animosity to nationals on either side of the conflict. Indeed, there was obviously some affection: "our friend, Herr Schmidt". Sides were taken but only in arguments and debates in the cafés of Palma. Neutrality brought with it a ban on any public displays of sympathies for either side, so marches or demonstrations were out, but there was no ban on publications expressing their views or on individuals arguing their case. The two sides divided predominantly along class and occupation lines. Supporters of the Central Powers were the conservatives - the aristocrats, the church, the military and big business. The Allies' supporters were the educated middle class, the new bourgeoisie, teachers, unionists and workers. 

Opinion in Mallorca reflected that across Spain. As I mentioned in a previous article, a reason why Spain remained neutral was because of its own internal tensions. It may even have been the main reason. Mallorca was relatively unaffected at that time, but mainland Spain wasn't. Had Spain gone to war, those tensions would have split the country apart, the aristocratic and Catholic conservatives against the liberals, the anarchists, the Republicans, the Catalans. Just as it was to be some years later.

Though Mallorca and Spain benefited from the war - ships were built in Mallorca and blankets, uniforms, boots, guns and food were exported - the ordinary worker reaped little of the benefit. The cost of living rose but wages didn't. There was also famine in Spain during the war. Politically, there was the rise of Maurism, the movement started by the son of Antoni Maura. Though Maura supported the Allies, he had drifted so far to the right that the movement which took his name can be seen as a precursor to the Falange.

And then, just before the end of the war, came a different threat. The first Mallorcan death as a result of the worldwide flu pandemic was in Sineu on 11 September, 1918. Mallorca and Spain staggered out of the war. Neutrality had bought the island and the country some time. The inevitable was merely delayed.

Mallorca And War: The collaborators

Collaboration in wartime comes about for different reasons. Coercion and threats, sympathies with a cause, expectation of personal gain. Collaboration by Mallorcans during the Great War was not the consequence of the first of these. There were sympathies on both sides, but such sympathies never really carried a great deal of weight. Spain was never likely to have been placed in a position where it needed to break its neutrality. But the country was placed in an awkward and potentially threatening situation because of one particular act of collaboration with the Central Powers.

The Mediterranean theatre during the war was well away from the Balearics, but by sheer fact of geography - being in the Mediterranean - Mallorca, despite neutrality, was dragged into the war. And the person who dragged the island in was Joan March. Though March was in effect an agent for the British secret services, he played both sides. It is generally believed that his personal sympathies were with the Allies, and he was, during World War Two, to express to Churchill his desire to assist against the Nazis and the Axis Powers. (Churchill, one understands, quite warmed to March. He knew full well that he was a rogue, but Churchill adopted a pragmatic attitude to such roguishness.)

But wherever his sympathies lay, March had greater motivations than ideology. Above all else, he was out to get what he could get, and it didn't really seem to bother him where he got this from. Though he was informing British intelligence about ship movements, he was also involved with supplying the other side and specifically U-boats belonging to the Austro-Hungarian fleet. In 1915, there was a major international incident when it was discovered that U-boats were sheltering off the island of Cabrera. Across the strait which separates the Cabrera archipelago from Mallorca was and is S'Avall, a finca by Colonia Sant Jordi. Its owner? Joan March.

There was a suspicion that the Spanish Government was complicit in this affair. It knew what March was doing and allowed him to do it. Or so it was believed, and indeed it is hard to believe that it was unaware of the U-boats. Churchill, then still First Lord of the Admiralty, insisted that the Spanish took some action. And it did. It expropriated the island of Cabrera from its owner Sebastian Feliu, citing reasons of national security. The island is to this day the government's property. The national security was such that a clear violation of neutrality might have posed a threat to Spain. It is highly doubtful that the British would have actually declared war on Spain, if only because the Italians were coming in on the Allies side at that time, and so it would have been counterproductive. Besides which, the swift action of the Spanish allayed fears that they were not acting in good faith when it came to being neutral. Nevertheless, it was the unscrupulous opportunist March who nearly messed things up.

But March wasn't the only one who threatened to compromise Spain and Mallorca's position by seeking some gain through collaboration with the Central Powers. The French had good reason to believe that there were a number of people from Sóller, a town with traditionally strong and friendly relations with France, who were engaged in supplying German U-boats off the coast of Mallorca. The newspaper, "Le Petit Marseillais", reported that early into the war there were those in Sóller who were making fuel and other supplies available to the Germans. The paper cited the testimony of a Mallorcan fisherman that several U-boats had been supplied on 20 September. Someone by the name of Vicens was named by the French as heading this conspiracy of collaboration. The French also accused the Maritima Sollerense shipping company of being engaged in the illegal supply of fuel to the Germans. The company protested its innocence, formally complaining to the French consulate in Palma and claiming that, despite neutrality, it and also the people of Sóller were firmly behind the Allies. (Collaboration could of course work in different ways.)

There was a different form of collaboration, one which was also centred on Sóller (and neighbouring Fornalutx). A fruit exporter by the name of Joan Mayol, originally from Fornalutx, had been exporting to Germany and Switzerland before the outbreak of war. He continued to export but only to Switzerland. However, these exports were then sold on to Germany at vast profit. Mayol was convicted under a law that had been drawn up in 1915, was sentenced to five years in prison but later acquitted following the intervention of Jeroni Estades - him again - in his capacity as a parliamentary deputy.

Perhaps there were other collaborators. If there were, it is doubtful that they had any other motive than personal gain. War or no war, Mallorca's entrepreneurs were determined to remain active.

Mallorca And The War: Gertrude Stein

Mallorca was, on the face of it, immune to great and terrible events elsewhere. Beneath the surface, despite the island's remoteness, it was not immune to the tensions that existed in Spain when the Great War broke out. Many have been the debates as to why Spain opted to be and remained neutral during World War I. Spain had little to gain (and much to lose) by entering the war on either side.
Heaven knows how the course of an in-any-event troubled Spanish history at the time would have been changed by war.

Mallorca's remoteness nevertheless offered a refuge from the troubles on the Spanish mainland. This, combined with its landscapes and climate and the promotional efforts of many artists, was what helped to attract foreigners seeking an escape from war. There were some foreign residents and visitors, who primarily lived and stayed in El Terreno in Palma at the start of the war, and there were others who had been to Mallorca previously and who chose to come back.

Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas were two such visitors. Stein had been in Mallorca before the war. She and Toklas were in England when war was declared. By October, strangely enough perhaps, they were preparing to return to their home in Paris. "It was not a very cheerful winter," Toklas didn't write. Stein wrote these words. "The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas", which was Stein's work, gives an account of their decision to go to Mallorca. "At last the spring came and we were ready to go away for a bit." "We decided we would go to Palma too and forget the war a little." The use of "too" was a reference to the fact that their friend, the American painter William Cook, had also decided to return to Mallorca.

The story of their stay in Palma isn't that long but it gives a flavour of how the war was perceived in Mallorca. But before they arrived in Palma, Stein and Toklas went to Barcelona. Stein makes a striking and poignant observation: "It was extraordinary to see so many men on the streets. I did not imagine there could be so many men left in the world".

Of the foreign residents at that time, Stein says that, in addition to several French families, "in those days Cook and ourselves were the only Americans to inhabit the island. There were a few English, about three families there". "Life in Palma was pleasant" and so they decided to spend the whole summer and to then extend their stay to the following spring. They had a house in Calle Dos de Mayo in El Terreno. As to Mallorcans' impressions of the war, feelings "were very mixed".

Stein gives an explanation of the locals' fascination with how much the war was going to cost. "They could discuss by the hour how much it cost a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour and even a minute." (A Mallorcan obsession with money and with what everything costs is not, one might suggest, anything new.) Stein observes that the subject of the cost was made even more fascinating by the fact that even men from the better middle classes "read, wrote and ciphered with difficulty", while the "women not at all". She tells of a German governess at a neighbour's house who would hang out a German flag when there was news of a German victory. She also reports that the "lower classes were strong for the Allies". A waiter looked forward to Spain entering the war on the Allies' side.

This pleasant life in Palma started to turn sour when the attack on Verdun began in February 1916. "We were all desperately unhappy." It is at this point in the story of their stay in Palma that events took an odd turn. Stein relates that there was a German ship called the Fangturm in the port. It had seemingly been a merchant ship as it sold pins and needles to Mediterranean ports. When war started, it had been unable to leave. It was rusting, but when the Verdun offensive started, "they began painting the Fangturm" (they, presumably, were German sailors who hadn't got away to Barcelona). One whole side of the ship was painted but then the painting stopped. Verdun, it seemed, was not going to be taken.

It's hard to know what Stein and others were worried about. It is also hard to understand why "when it was all over, none of us wanted to stay in Mallorca any longer". (Verdun was far from over.) Anyway, Stein and Toklas left some time in the spring of 1916 and went back to a Paris where "everybody was cheerful" and they joined the American Fund for the French Wounded. Back in Mallorca, they were still counting the cost of war, while there was a half-painted German ship in Palma's port.

Declaration Of War And Mallorca

The night of 4 August, 1914 would doubtless have been like nights in early August in Mallorca have always been. It would have been sultry. The sounds would have been those of cicadas. Far away from Mallorca it was also a warm night. The windows of the Admiralty in London were thrown open. The sounds were of the singing of "God Save The King" and of the chimes of Big Ben. A telegram went out across the world. As Churchill concluded: "the deed was done".

On that sultry night in August, assuming they were aware of events in London, who among people in Mallorca would have been taking notice? Perhaps everyone. It was war, after all. But it was someone else's war, and confirmation of that came three days later. Spain was neutral. There would have been those who paid greater notice; foreign residents and visitors in El Terreno, for example, and also the Archduke Louis Salvador, perhaps even then preparing to leave. Summoned back to Austria-Hungary, his presence in neutral Mallorca, his love for Mallorca notwithstanding, would have been awkward had he stayed.

Someone else who would have been paying careful attention would have been Joan March, probably resident in his summer palace in Cala Ratjada. What can we imagine of that night of 4 August, 1914? Would there have been a small dinner party at the March palace? Lobster and wines, followed by the men taking themselves to a discrete terrace to discuss affairs of war while they smoked cigars and drank their brandy? Antoni Maura was a summer neighbour of March's in Cala Ratjada. He was not prime minister then, but he was eventually to advocate Spain's siding with the Allies. Perhaps, for the time being though, neutrality was best. There were riches to be made while the world went to war and Spain didn't.

While Maura was the politician, March was the businessman. What might he have been eyeing up? When might it have become opportune for him to be involved with the British secret service? March, as useful to Britain during the Great War as he was to be during the Second World War. Useful, even though British intelligence dubbed him a "scoundrel of the deepest dye". He maintained links with the Germans during the Great War and used those links to give British intelligence information as to German shipping movements. On the night of 4 August, March was probably contemplating having a good war, and he was right to have contemplated this. By 1915, the Italian Government was being informed as to the spy-network activities of Charles Thoroton. Based in Gibraltar, Thoroton's network extended across Spain and into Morocco. The Italian Consulate in Gibraltar reported that all the Spanish coasts were under the surveillance and control of Thoroton, "who is informed of all ship movements ... the English authority is in liaison with a Juan March, a contrabandist with control of over 240 motor ships and monoplanes ... this covers all ship movements from the Balearic Islands ... he gains a lot of money".

There would have been others who were taking special notice on the night of 4 August. They weren't foreigners and they weren't the powerful. They were ordinary Mallorcans who knew people abroad. On that night, would relatives and friends of Jaime and Antonio Oliver in Sóller, of Juan Mora Ferrer, also from Sóller, of Jaime Llabrés Bestard from Establiments and José Niell from Sineu have been concerned about German advances into Belgium? On 20 August, they were shot and killed at the shop in Liège that the Oliver brothers ran, having returned given that the Battle of Liège had finished.

The initial explanation for their deaths was that they had been caught up in an exchange of gunfire. Almost a month later, a businessman from Inca, Sebastian Simonet, had managed to get back to Mallorca. He told a very different story. It was reported in the Mallorcan newspaper "La Almudaina". He said that the Mallorcans had been arrested by drunk German soldiers, handcuffed, taken to grounds at the university and shot by firing squads.

There was outrage, and the outrage was all the greater because the Spanish Government appeared indifferent to what had happened. The matter was nonetheless raised in the Cortes, Jeroni Estades, he of the Sóller train and by then a parliamentary deputy, being one of those who demanded a stronger response. Eventually, the government, via the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, was able to extract compensation for the men's deaths.

But back to more pleasant matters. On the night of 4 August, the people of Binissalem would still have been celebrating events of two days before. On that day, the town's football club was officially founded and the first match played. A hundred years on, and the centenary has been duly honoured. Far away war was starting. In Mallorca they kicked footballs. In peace.