They no longer marked the front by artillery.
It was power grids now.
Fuel depots.
Water routing.
Each one seized didn't just represent a tactical gain, it turned a town.
They didn't fight for provinces.
They turned off radios, severed junctions, and stepped into vacuum.
It began outside Albacete.
At dawn, a convoy of unmarked trucks halted at a silent road junction.
French soldiers stepped out not with rifles raised, but with clipboards.
Engineers moved with practiced ease.
They didn't ask for keys to the local command post.
They already had them.
One by one, the lights flickered on across the town.
French uniforms appeared on balconies.
Civilian shops opened two hours later without instruction.
The baker's window displayed baguettes beside Spanish loaves.
A girl handed out bread to French soldiers outside the former Nationalist police station.
"They don't even look like victors," her father muttered. "They look like replacements."
