Word: brihuega
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Observers in Rome easily understood this as retaliation for the way the British press gloated over Italy's disastrous defeat at Brihuega in Spain two months ago (TIME, March 29 et seq.) and her even more ignominious rout at the hands of the Basque fishwives of Bermeo last fortnight. Deeper than this, Mussolini has burned for months over British insistence on having a representative of Haile Selassie's Ethiopian Government at the Coronation...
...also greatly strengthened Leftist morale. The Basque lines again held firm, pushing back General Mola's men at several points. Then came a bit of news even more galling to the pride of Benito Mussolini than the rout at Brihuega. In an attempt to encircle Bilbao Italian troops pushed ahead. One Italian brigade reached the port of Bermeo eight miles from the capital on the Biscay coast, captured it. Here they were counterattacked by Basque militia, for the most part fishermen and their armed wives. When the Italians broke ranks, the bloodthirsty fishwives chased them into houses, beat them...
...shall be in Bilbao any day, any hour," he boasted. "Eight thousand Italians and Germans are leading the advance, and this time we are mixing the Germans in with the Italians just so the Italians will not repeat the Brihuega adventure...
Spaniards are poor marksmen and worse at close order drill, but they do not run away. Not in all the nine months of Spain's civil war has there been anything on either side to match the complete rout of the Italian divisions at Brihuega, and Rightist General Franco and his German and Italian backers were bound to make that defeat good last week. More than prestige was at stake in the attack on Bilbao. Bilbao captured should give the Rightists control of the Biscay coast, remove serious military pressure on their rear, allow thousands...
...Reports that Brihuega was simply an air victory, with [Italian] columns stampeded and panicked without fighting, are corrected when the battlefield is studied. It was a bitterly fought seven-day battle, much of the time rain and snow making auto transport impossible...