So, Catalonia had already fallen to the Francoists. ON 5-6 March Casado created the National Defence Council , a junta supported by the CNT bureaucrats like Eduardo Val, José Manuel González Marín to replace the pro-Stalinist Negrin government. General Miaja joined this and ordered the arrest of Communist militants in Madrid. Meanwhile, in Alicante, Negrin, who was preparing to flee to France with his ministers, ordered the Stalinist officer Luis Barcelo Jover , commander of the First Army Corps of the Centre, to try and take Madrid from Casado. As a result several days of fighting took place between his corps and the anarchist divisions commanded by Cipriano Mera. Barcelo surrendered on 12th March after learning that the Negrin government and Communist leaders like La Pasionaria had fled to France . Casado then began to negotiate a peace process with the Francoists. Franco responded by saying that he accepted only unconditional surrender.
The late Peter E. Newell wrote about Mera that, " On February 23, Colonel Casado, commander of the Army of the Centre in Madrid, together with the "socialist" Professor Besterio, and Cipriano Mera, the then commander of the IVth Army Group, came out against the pro-Communist government of Negrin. Casado banned the publication of the Madrid Communist newspaper, Mundo Obrero. The situation in the field was now hopeless. Casado, speaking of the devastation and starvation, insisted that the war must end. And Mera argued for "an honourable peace, based on justice and brotherhood", though he remained at his post. A junta was formed, while the Negrin "government" was in Elda in total isolation, and protected only by a tiny detachment of less than 80 Communist officers and other ranks. The Communists continued to make a show of resistance, but in fact abandoned their posts. By March 3, Casado told Mera to take command of the Central Army. By March 6, most of the Communist commanders, such as Lister, and the Communist politicians, such as La Pasionaria, took flight. A few Communist army corps remained in the Madrid area; and on March 7, one of them, led by Colonel Barcelo, was attacked by Mera. A week of "civil war" within the Republican camp resulted in the death of 2,000 in Madrid alone. By the end of March, there was no Republican Army. The Casado junta, which, in desperation, hoped for ,”an honourable" peace with Franco, held its last meeting on March 27. Casado left Madrid by plane. Everyone who could get out left. And hours before the arrival of the Francoists, Cipriano Mera also left. There was nothing he could do. Republican Spain was finished. Mera was, of course, criticised by some of his anarchist colleagues for throwing in his weight behind Casado. He was blamed for risking a "precipitous act", or a faux pas. He, like Federica Montseny and Garcia Oliver, was also criticised for abandoning social revolution for "collaboration" with the bourgeois State in order to defeat Fascism." It should be remembered that Mera had fiercely hated the Stalinists since the May Days in Barcelona in 1937 when the Stalinists launched a provocation against the CNT-FAI, and was disgusted by the behaviour of the Stalinist executioner Santiago Carrillo in Madrid.
The POUMist Ignacio Iglesias in his The Final Weeks of the Spanish Republic argues that since the National Defence Council eventually surrendered to Franco, the Communists denounced Miaja, Casado and Mera as traitors, while claiming that the Communist Party and Negrin wanted to continue the anti-fascist resistance. Iglesias shows that Negrin and the Stalinists (including the Soviet advisors) had already decided to leave Spain, and that all talk about resistance from their side was bollox. and "that the non-Communist coup was deliberately provoked by Negrin and the Communist Party, so that the non-Communists would be forced to surrender to Franco and thereby discredit themselves, while the Communists and their allies would mutter a few words in protest and then abscond unscathed."
