lanes, tanks and hundreds of trucks.
The fights were heavy in the South. The defenders make many casualties in the Italians troops. They resist three days, but without planes our tanks was very difficult. In fast movements the fascist were available to surrounded dozens of battalions of the Cantabrian Army and to took Reinosa, a small and industrial city and the most important of the south of Cantabria. But in the east front something shocking was going to happen. This was the front where the vast majority of Basque battalions where located.
At one point this battalions started to withdrew (without a shoot against the fascist troops) from the front line. They started to march to Santoña, a fishing village in the East Coast of Cantabria. The Basque police organize all the arrival of the Basque army.
The took control of it, they freed more than 1.000 fascist prisoners and drove them into the fascist lines, and they keep a dozens of the high profile fascist prisoners with themselves to protected them against Cantabrian militias and soldiers. The fascist took quickly all the territory that they left behind.
The only resistance was by lonely Cantabrian battalions and militias, all shocked by the withdrew of the Basque army
This happened because since many, many months before they were negotiations between the Basque Governments and the Fascist side. The contacts were with the Basque representatives and the Church and the Italians, that after contact the Spanish Fascist leadership. The withdrew was the result of all this, but not the only one. As part of the new Government after the reorganization they were between the people that organized the defence of Cantabria before the fascist attack. And also they give more military information of the fronts to the enemy. Thanks to this the fascist advanced quickly (in few days) into Cantabrian territory, from South to East heading the Capital, Santander.
Even this they found resistance and fascists paid with lives and blood the metres they advance, but the chaos produced by all this was big and the defence was uncoordinated. The civilians and the villages were a permanent target in the fascist advance to Santander. In Barreda and Torlavega -industrial areas- (Torlavega is the second big city of the country) the resistance was high, but not for much time. The columns of Cantabrian refugees (elder, women and children most of them) started to moved to the west, and many were cowardly attacked by fascist airplanes.
The rest of the Cantabrian Army started to concentrated in Santander waiting to defence the city and fight there with the fascist. Dozens of thousand of soldiers and militia men wait for an opportunity to fight properly the enemy. Many of course not, but even that they were there.
The generals and some government members flee to Asturias in a submarine two days before the arrival of the first fascist troops. And just before that the Basque Government and the fascist leader were rescue from Santander by a ship of the Royal Navy. The Cantabrian army was left behind by it high officials, the new government and generals. That this is not the only thing.
In secret, with no knowledge of the Cantabrian soldiers and militias a representative of the Police, a high rank office and a Basque official went to meet the fascist out the city. They give them all the military information pointing them the battalions that were going to fight to dead. Then the 26 of august of 1937 Santander was captured. Thanks to the traitors the fascist make the biggest number of prisoners of the “Civil War”. More than 60.000.
But many soldier and fighters managed to escape to the west. A defence line was made from the Coast line to the Cantabrian Cordillera. The resistance was still going. The first of September Unquera, a village in the west coast was captured by the fascist, but the valleys of Polaciones and Liebana resist. In Asturies the fascist were moving forward to the coast.
It was still fights Asturias but the resistance started to move to the mountains. Less than 5.000 defenders (many came from Asturi