Chapter 268: Spain was shrinking by the hour.

Words : 1156 Updated : Sep 29th, 2025

Chapter 268: Spain was shrinking by the hour.The first strike hit just after 0200. It wasn’t artillery. It wasn’t even an armored column. It was silence, followed by lights cutting through the mist outside a command station near Zaragoza. By the time the sentries reacted, the tanks were already past the outer perimeter. What he wanted was already on the ground airstrips, rails, fuel depots, food caches, communications nodes. Spain, or at least the central vein of it, had been retrofitted in advance. Now came the break. At 0200, Zaragoza’s eastern command center vanished from Franco’s chain of communication. At 0214, the main junction to its northern fuel line was cut. At 0235, the infantry moved in from the hills Moreau’s engineers had surveyed weeks before. There were no last stands. No heroic radio calls. The command post surrendered in twenty-seven minutes. Three hours later, Valladolid’s central headquarters found its phone lines dead. Thirty-two minutes after that, all the radios went quiet. The staff half of them still in bed heard engines first. They expected trucks. They got tanks. Colonel Pujol, leading the Nationalist defense of Valladolid, never made it to his uniform. He was captured in his bathrobe, hands raised. Leclerc sent a single transmission. "Command 2 down. Orders?" Moreau’s reply was four words. "Next. No breathing room." By mid-morning, the French 8th and 11th Armored were converging east and west at once. The attack wasn’t linear. It was surgical. They skipped static fortifications. Ignored strongholds. They aimed for hearts and spines command posts, logistical hubs, airfields with fuel lines exposed. Barcelona’s command structure didn’t get a warning. By the time an emergency meeting was called. French scouts were already past the outer hills. Franco stood hunched over the operations table in Burgos, face pale, breath shallow. The news was coming in from three fronts simultaneously. It made no sense. It defied their intelligence assessments. The French had moved from rail construction to command eradication in less than a day. Guderian stood stiff beside him, eyes locked on the updated map. Several grey markers German field observation units had gone dark. "It’s not momentum," he said. "It’s velocity." "They shouldn’t have the capacity," Franco snapped. "This scale of movement, it should take weeks. Where are they getting the fuel? The maintenance?" "They already had it," Guderian murmured. "We just didn’t realize they were building a launchpad beneath us." An Italian officer stepped forward. "Zaragoza is gone. Their staff surrendered without a fight. No artillery, no siege." "How the hell did they take it in one night?" Franco demanded. The Italian replied, "They didn’t take the city. They took the command." Franco stared at him. "What are you saying?" "I’m saying your troops still held the perimeter at sunrise. They just didn’t know who to take orders from." In the hills above Valladolid, Captain Amélie Delorme, leading one of the forward coordination teams, watched through field glasses as white flags emerged across the low valley. "They’ve surrendered," the radio man said, stunned. "They didn’t even fire." Delorme gave a short nod. "Tell HQ, Site Four neutralized. Command intact. No civilian resistance." The radio man hesitated. "We just took a provincial capital. Shouldn’t we..." Delorme didn’t blink. "Shouldn’t what?" "Shouldn’t we celebrate?" He shook his head. "We’re not here to dance on cities. We’re here to remove their spine." By the time French armor reached the outskirts of Barcelona, panic had fully gripped the remaining Nationalist command. Franco’s headquarters was flooded with overlapping reports none complete, none reassuring. Vigo, far to the northwest near the Portuguese border, had gone dark by midday. The French hadn’t even announced their approach. They simply arrived, swarmed the communication centers, and seized the city’s transport hub within two hours. All of it had been scouted weeks prior. Civilians had been providing route maps and traffic patterns the whole time. In Madrid, the Republican remnant forces stirred to life. They hadn’t coordinated with Moreau, but the ripple was unmistakable. Franco’s troops were being pulled in two directions. Any attempt to reinforce the center meant exposing the south. Any defense of the coast meant abandoning the interior. In Barcelona, the streets were filled with civilians before the French even entered. At 1630 hours, the French 6th Armored Division entered the city without firing a shot. By nightfall, a bunch of Spanish territory stretching like a blade from Vigo through Valladolid, Zaragoza, and down to Barcelona was entirely in French hands. In a stone-walled office hastily reinforced with sandbags, Franco sat across from Guderian and three of his German staff officers. His voice was hoarse. "They didn’t announce. They didn’t posture. They just came." Guderian nodded grimly. "I’ve seen something like this once before," he said. "This is like Spear Tip." "They didn’t even kill many," Franco muttered. "No. They left the units intact. Surrounded, disarmed, left to stew. It’s a psychological operation as much as a military one." Franco looked up at him, eyes tired. "What do I have left?" Guderian looked at the map, then back at Franco. "2/3 of Spain of which 1/3 is still in siege by the rebels." An Italian liaison stepped forward. "Shall we prepare fallback lines?" Franco didn’t answer. At the central command tent near Barbastro, Gamelin arrived just before midnight. He didn’t speak at first. Moreau stood at the main table, arms folded, eyes scanning the map as red arrows stretched across nearly a third of Spain. "You moved faster than any general in this century," Gamelin finally said. "I didn’t move fast," Moreau replied. "I just moved before they realized they were the target." Gamelin stared at the front lines. "Vigo, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Barcelona... in one day." Moreau nodded. "A day is all you need if you’ve already prepared the ground. They thought we were building a wall. We were building a spring." Gamelin gave a thin smile. "They’re in shock," he said. "Yes," Moreau answered. "And we haven’t stopped yet." He tapped the map south of Madrid. "We squeeze. Not with bombs. With roads. We will surround the next ten cities before they realize we’re done with conquest." Gamelin looked at him. "And Franco?" Moreau met his eyes. "Franco just realized he’s not fighting an army. He’s fighting a replacement." In the hills above the Ebro, a Nationalist infantry unit attempted to retreat east, only to find the bridges already under French control. They stopped. Looked around. Realized no one was coming. At noon the next day, they surrendered to a French infantry officer with a cigarette in his hand and no weapon drawn. In Lisbon, the Portuguese government released a neutral statement expressing "deep concern" over France’s rapid advance. In private, they requested assurances that the French would not cross the border. At Burgos, Franco sat alone for the first time in days. He stared at the map, at the cities turned red. Spain was shrinking by the hour.

Chapter 268: Spain was shrinking by the hour.

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