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Not to be confused with the Spanish Civil War of 1820-1823.
| Spanish Civil War |
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| Alcázar – Gijón – Oviedo – Guipúzcoa - Mérida – Mallorca – Badajoz – Sierra Guadalupe – Irún - Monte Pelato – Talavera – Cape Espartel – Madrid – Corunna Road – Málaga – Jarama - War in the North – Guadalajara – Guernica – Bilbao – Brunete – Santander – Belchite – El Mazuco – Cape Cherchell – Teruel – Cape Palos - Aragon Offensive - XYZ Line – Ebro - Catalonia Chronology: 1936 1937 1938-39 |
The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d\'état committed by parts of the army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Civil War devastated Spain from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, ending with the victory of the rebels and the founding of a dictatorship led by the Nationalist General Francisco Franco. The supporters of the Republic, or Republicans (republicanos), gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico, while the followers of the Rebellion, nacionales (literally, "nationals" but rendered in the English bibliography as "nationalists"), received the support of the major European Axis powers of Italy and Germany and neighbouring Portugal.
The war increased tensions in the lead up to the Second World War and became in some cases a world war by proxy, with Germany in particular using the war as a rehearsal for many of the blitzkrieg tactics it later used in the war in Europe. The advent of the mass media allowed an unprecedented level of attention (Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and Robert Capa all covered it) and so the war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.
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Spain had undergone several civil wars and revolts, carried out by both the reformists and the conservatives, who tried to displace each other from power. While the reformists tried to abolish the absolutist monarchy in the country to end the old regime and found a new model of state, the most traditionalist sectors of the political sphere systematically tried to avert these reforms and to sustain the monarchy. The Infante Carlos and his descendants rallied to the cry of "God, Country and King" and fought for the cause of Spanish tradition (absolutism and Catholicism) against the liberalism and later the republicanism of the Spanish governments of the day. Initiatives like the founding of the First Spanish Republic by the republicans in 1873 began to establish tendencies in the Spanish concept of the state, which, along with other causes, would later culminate in the Civil War of 1936.
There were several reasons for the war, many of them long-term tensions that had escalated over the years. Spain had undergone a number of different systems of rule following the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. A monarchy under Alfonso XIII lasted from 1887 to 1931, but from 1923 was held in place by the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Following Primo de Rivera\'s overthrow in 1930 the monarchy was unable to maintain power and the Second Republic was declared in 1931. This Republic was led by a coalition of the left and center. A number of controversial reforms were passed, such as the Agrarian Law of 1932, distributing land among poor peasants. Millions of Spaniards had been living in more or less absolute poverty under the firm control of the aristocratic landowners in a feudal-like system. These reforms, along with anticlericalist acts, as well as military cut-backs and reforms, created strong opposition from the former elite.
The political situation had been violent for several years before the beginning of the Civil War. In the 1933 Spanish elections, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) (CEDA) won the most seats in the Cortes, but not enough to form a majority. President Niceto Alcalá Zamora refused to ask its leader, José María Gil-Robles, to form a government, and instead invited Alejandro Lerroux of the Radical Republican Party, a centrist party despite its name, to do so. CEDA supported the Lerroux government; it later demanded and, on October 1 1934, received three ministerial positions. The Lerroux/CEDA government attempted to annul the social legislation that had been passed by the previous Manuel Azaña government, provoking general strikes in Valencia and Zaragoza, street conflicts in Madrid and Barcelona, and, on October 6, an armed miners\' rebellion in Asturias and an autonomist rebellion in Catalonia. Both rebellions were suppressed, and were followed by mass political arrests and trials.
Lerroux\'s alliance with the right, his harsh suppression of the revolt in 1934, and the Stra-Perlo scandal combined to leave him and his party with little support going into the 1936 election. (Lerroux himself lost his seat in parliament.)
As internal disagreements mounted in the coalition, strikes were frequent, and there were pistol attacks on both unionists and clergyAntony Beevor, Battle for Spain, (2006) pp 81-94. In the elections of February 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of the seats in parliament. The coalition, which included the Socialist Party (PSOE), two liberal parties (the Republican Left Party of Manuel Azaña and the Republican Union Party), and Communist Party of Spain, as well as Galician and Catalan nationalists, received 34.3 percent of the popular vote, compared to 33.2 percent for the National Front parties led by CEDA.1936 Elections on Spartacus Schoolnet. Accessed 11 October 2006. The Basque nationalists were not officially part of the Popular Front, but were sympathetic to it. The anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which had sat out previous elections, urged its members to vote for the Popular Front in response to a campaign promise of amnesty for jailed leftists. The Socialist Party refused to participate in the new government. Its leader, Largo Caballero, hailed as "the Spanish Lenin" by Pravda, told crowds that revolution was now inevitable. Privately, however, he aimed merely at ousting the liberals and other non-socialists from the cabinet. Moderate Socialists like Indalecio Prieto condemned the left\'s May Day marches, clenched fists, and talk of revolution as insanely provocative.Preston, Paul, "Spain 1936: From Coup d\'Etat to Civil War," History Today, Volume: 36 Issue: 7, July 1986, pp. 24–29
From the Comintern\'s point of view the increasingly powerful, if fragmented, left and the weak right were an optimum situation.Payne, Stanley George The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism p. 118 (2004 Yale University Press) Their goal was to use a veil of legitimate democratic institutions to outlaw the right and to convert the state into the Soviet vision of a "people\'s republic" with total leftist domination, a goal which was repeatedly voiced not only in Comintern instructions but also in the public statements of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain).Payne, Stanley George The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism p. 118 (2004 Yale University Press)
Scholar Stanley G. Payne noted that by the time of the outbreak of war Republicans had abandoned constitutional republicanism for leftist revolution:
The leftist zone has been variously designated \'Republican,\' \'loyalist,\' and \'Popular Front.\' Of those terms, the adjective \'loyalist\' is somewhat misleading, for there was no attempt to remain loyal to the constitutional Republican regime. If that had been the scrupulous policy of the left, there would have been no revolt and civil war in the first place. ...Thus after July 1936 what remained of the constitutional Republic gave way to the "revolutionary Republican confederation" of 1936-1937. Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 646-647 (Print Edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) (LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE Accessed May 15, 2007)
Without the Socialists, Prime Minister Manuel Azaña, a liberal who favored gradual reform while respecting the democratic process, led a minority government. In April, parliament replaced President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, a moderate who had alienated virtually all the parties, with Azaña. Although the right also voted for Zamora\'s removal, this was a watershed event which inspired many conservatives to give up on parliamentary politics. Azaña was the object of intense hate by Spanish rightists, who remembered how he had pushed a reform agenda through a recalcitrant parliament in 1931–33. Joaquín Arrarás, a friend of Francisco Franco\'s, called him "a repulsive caterpillar of red Spain."Preston, Paul, Franco and Azaña, Volume: 49 Issue: 5, May 1999, pp. 17–23 The Spanish generals particularly disliked Azaña because he had cut the army\'s budget and closed the military academy when he was war minister (1931). CEDA turned its campaign chest over to army plotter Emilio Mola. Monarchist José Calvo Sotelo replaced CEDA\'s Gil Robles as the right\'s leading spokesman in parliament.Preston, Paul, op. cit.
This was a period of rising tensions. Radicals became more aggressive, while conservatives turned to paramilitary and vigilante actions. According to official sources, 330 people were assassinated and 1,511 were wounded in politically-related violence; records show 213 failed assassination attempts, 113 general strikes, and the destruction (typically by arson) of 160 religious buildings.The statistics on assassinations, destruction of religious buildings, etc. immediately before the start of the war come from The Last Crusade: Spain: 1936 by Warren Carroll (Christendom Press, 1998). He collected the numbers from Historia de la Persecución Religiosa en España (1936–1939) by Antonio Montero Moreno (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 3rd edition, 1999).
On July 12, 1936, in Madrid, a far right group murdered Lieutenant José Castillo of the Assault Guards, a special police corps created to deal with urban violence, and a Socialist. The next day, leftist gunman Luis Cuenca killed José Calvo Sotelo, the leader of the conservative opposition in the Cortes (Spanish parliament), in revenge. Cuenca was operating in a commando unit of the Assault Guard led by Captain Fernando Condés Romero. Condés was close to the Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto, but there is no indication that Prieto was complicit in Cuenca\'s assassination of Calvo Sotelo. However, the murder of such a prominent member of parliament, with involvement of the police, aroused suspicions and strong reactions amongst the Center and the Right.Bullón de Mendoza, Alfonso Calvo Sotelo: Vida y muerte (2004) Barcelona. Thomas, Hugh The Spanish Civil War (1961, rev. 2001) New York pp. 196–198 and p.309. Condés was a close personal friend of Castillo. His squad had originally sought to arrest Gil Robles as a reprisal for Castillo\'s murder, but Robles was not at home, so they went to the house of Calvo Sotelo. Thomas concluded that the intention of Condés was to arrest Calvo Sotelo and that Cuenca acted on his own initiative, although he acknowledges other sources that dispute this finding. Cuenca and Condés were both killed in action in the first Rebel offensive against Madrid shortly after the start of the war. Calvo Sotelo was the leading Spanish monarchist. He protested against what he viewed as escalating anti-religious terror, expropriations, and hasty agricultural reforms, which he considered Bolshevist and anarchist. He instead advocated the creation of a corporative state and declared that if such a state was fascist, he was also a fascist.Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, (1987), p. 8.
He also declared that Spanish soldiers would be mad to not rise for Spain against Anarchy. In turn, the leader of the communists, Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, allegedly vowed that Calvo Sotelo\'s speech would be his last speech in the Cortes.Hugh Thomas, (1987), p. 207.Hugh Thomas notes, in a footnote, that the remark does not appear in the official record of debates, nor was it heard by two reliable witnesses who then were present, Henry Buckley and Miguel Maura. Hugh Thomas, (1987), p. 207. Although the Nationalist generals were already at advanced stages of planning an uprising, the event is seen by some as a catalyst for what followed.
On July 17, 1936, the nationalist-traditionalist rebellion long feared by some in the Popular Front government began. Its start was signaled by the phrase "Over all of Spain, the sky is clear" that was broadcast on the radio. Casares Quiroga, who had succeeded Azaña as prime minister, had in the previous weeks exiled the military officers suspected of conspiracy against the Republic, including Puerto Rico-born General Manuel Goded Llopis and General Francisco Franco, sent to the Balearic Islands and to the Canary Islands, respectively. Both generals immediately took control of these islands. A British MI6 intelligence agent, Major Hugh Pollard, then flew Franco to Spanish MoroccoAlpert, Michael BBC History Magazine April 2002 in a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide to see Juan March Ordinas, where the Spanish Army of Africa, led by Nationalist ranks, were almost unopposed in assuming control.
The rising was intended to be a swift coup d\'état, but was botched; conversely, the government was able to retain control of only part of the country. In this first stage, the rebels failed to take any major cities — in Madrid they were hemmed into the Montaña barracks. The barracks fell the next day with much bloodshed. In Barcelona, anarchists armed themselves and defeated the rebels. General Goded, who arrived from the Balearic islands, was captured and later executed. However, the turmoil facilitated that the anarchists would control Barcelona and much of the surrounding Aragonese and Catalan countryside, effectively breaking away with the Republican government. The Republicans held on to Valencia and controlled almost all of the Eastern Spanish coast and central area around Madrid. Except for Asturias, Cantabria and part of the Basque Country, the Nationals took most of northern and northwestern Spain and also a southern area in central and western Andalusia including Seville.
Polish volunteers of the International Brigades.
Republicans (also known as Spanish loyalists) received weapons and volunteers from the Soviet Union, Mexico, the international Socialist movement and the International Brigades. The Republicans ranged from centrists who supported a moderately capitalist liberal democracy to revolutionary anarchists and communists; their power base was primarily secular and urban, but also included landless peasants, and it was particularly strong in industrial regions like Asturias and Catalonia.Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain (2006), pp 30-33
The conservative, strongly Catholic Basque country, along with Catalonia and Galicia, sought autonomy or even independence from the central government of Madrid. This option was left open by the Republican government. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, (1987), pp. 86–90. All these forces were gathered under the "Ejército Popular Republicano" (EPR) or Republican Popular Army.
The Nationalists on the contrary opposed these separatist movements, but were chiefly defined by their anti-communism, which served as the galvanizing agent of diverse or even opposed movements like falangists or monarchists.
Their leaders had a generally wealthier, more conservative, monarchist, landowning background, and they favoured the centralization of state power. In turn, their clerical background accounted for much of their popular support. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well as most Roman Catholic clergy, supported the Nationalists, while Portugal\'s Estado Novo provided logistical support. Their forces were gathered into the "Ejército Nacional" or National Army.
The active participants in the war covered the entire gamut of the political positions and ideologies of the time. The Nationalist (nacionales) side included the Carlists and Legitimist monarchists, Spanish nationalists, the Falange, Catholics, and most conservatives and monarchist liberals. On the Republican side were socialists, communists, liberals and anarchists. Catalan and Basque nationalists were not univocal. Left-wing Catalan nationalists were in the Republican side. Conservative Catalan nationalists were far less vocal supporting the Republican government due to the anti-clericalism and confiscations occurring in some areas controlled by the latter (some conservative Catalan nationalists like Francesc Cambó actually funded the rebel side). Basque nationalists, heralded by the conservative Basque nationalist party, were mildly supportive of the Republican government, even though Basque nationalists in Álava and Navarre sided with the uprising for the same reasons influentiating Catalan conservative nationalists.
To view the political alignments from another perspective, the Nationals included the majority of the Catholic clergy and of practicing Catholics (outside of the Basque region), important elements of the army, most of the large landowners, and many businessmen. The Republicans included most urban workers, most peasants, and much of the educated middle class, especially those who were not entrepreneurs.
The genial monarchist General José Sanjurjo was figurehead of the rebellion, while Emilio Mola was chief planner and second in command. Mola began serious planning in the spring, but General Francisco Franco hesitated until early July, inspiring other plotters to refer to him as "Miss Canary Islands 1936." Franco was a key player because of his prestige as a former director of the military academy and the man who suppressed the Socialist uprising of 1934. Warned that a military coup was imminent, leftists put barricades up on the roads on July 17. Franco avoided capture by taking a tugboat to the airport. From there he was flown to Morocco by British intelligence, where he took command of the battle-hardened colonial army in Spanish Morocco.Preston, Paul, "From rebel to Caudillo: Franco\'s path to power," History Today Volume: 33 Issue: 11, November 1983, pp. 4–10Alpert, Michael BBC History Magazine April 2002 Sanjurjo was killed in a plane crash on July 20, leaving effective command split between Mola in the north and Franco in the South. Franco was chosen overall commander at a meeting of ranking generals at Salamanca on September 21. He outranked Mola and by this point his Army of Africa had demonstrated its military superiority.
One of the Nationalists principal claimed motives was to confront the anti-clericalism of the Republican regime and to defend the Roman Catholic Church, which had been the target of attacks, and which many on the Republican side blamed for the ills of the country. Even before the war religious buildings were burnt without action on the part of the Republican authorities to prevent it. As part of the social revolution taking place, others were turned into Houses of the People.notes to the documentary Reportaje Del Movimiento Revolucionario en Barcelona, Hastings Free TV Similarly, many of the massacres perpetrated by the Republican side targeted the Catholic clergy. Franco\'s Moroccan Muslim troops found this repulsive as well, and for the most part fought loyally and often ferociously for the Nationalists. Articles 24 and 26 of the Constitution of the Republic had banned the Jesuits, which deeply offended many within the conservatives. After the beginning of the Nationalist coup, anger flared anew at the Church and its role in Spanish politics. Notwithstanding these religious matters, the Basque nationalists, who nearly all sided with the Republic, were, for the most part, practicing Catholics.
The Catholic Church was prompted by post war victorious Franco to beatify the Spanish martyrs something which was not even considered. Later on, with the return of democracy to Spain, Pope John Paul II did beatify several hundred people murdered for being priests or nuns, and Pope Benedict XVI beatified almost 500 more on October 28, 2007. Thousands of Servant of God candidates for sainthood have been accepted by the Vatican "General Index: Martyrs of the Religious Persecution during the Spanish Civil War (X 1934, 36–39)" New Evangelization with the Saints, L\'Osservatore Romano 28 November 2001, page 3 (Weekly English Edition) Tucson priests one step away from sainthood Arizona Star 06.12.2007. More than 6000 clergy and religious figures were killed.
Republican sympathizers proclaimed it as a struggle between "tyranny and democracy", or "fascism and liberty", and many non-Spanish young, committed reformers and revolutionaries joined the International Brigades, believing the Spanish Republic was the front line of the war against fascism. Franco\'s supporters, however, portrayed it as a battle between the "red hordes" of communism and anarchism on the one hand and "Christian civilization" on the other. They also stated that they were protecting the Establishment and bringing security and direction to what they felt was an ungoverned and lawless society.Beevor, The Battle for Spain, (2006) ("Chapter 21: The Propaganda War and the Intellectuals")
The Republicans were also split among themselves. The left and Basque or Catalan nationalist conservatives had many conflicting ideas. The Cortes (Spanish Parliament) consisted of 16 parties in 1931. When autonomy was granted to Catalonia and the Basque Provinces in 1932, a nationalist coup was attempted but failed. An anarchist uprising resulted in the massacre of hundreds of rebels and intra civil war between anarchists and communists in Catalonia. In addition to this opposition, Spanish exports decreased by 75% between 1931 and 1942. Thus, the rural reforms were of little help to the starving lower class. Economic difficulties on the whole prevented the Republic from doing anything constructive during its time in government.
Flag of Eoin O\'Duffy\'s "Blueshirts".
The Spanish Civil War had large numbers of non-Spanish citizens participating in combat and advisory positions. Foreign governments contributed large amounts of financial assistance and military aid to forces led by Generalísimo Francisco Franco. Forces fighting on behalf of the Second Spanish Republic received limited aid but support was seriously hampered by the arms embargo declared by France and the UK.
Both Fascist Italy, under dictator Benito Mussolini, and Nazi Germany, under dictator Adolf Hitler, sent troops, aircraft, tanks, and other weapons to support Franco. The Italian government provided the "Corps of Volunteer Troops" (Corpo Truppe Volontarie) and Germany sent the "Condor Legion" (Legion Condor). The CTV reached a high of about 50,000 men and as many as 75,000 Italians fought in Spain. The German force numbered about 12,000 men at its zenith and as many as 19,000 Germans fought in Spain.
The Soviet Union primarily provided material assistance to the Republican forces. While Soviet troops amounted to no more than 700 men, Soviet "volunteers" often piloted aircraft or operated tanks purchased by the Spanish Republican forces. The Republic had to purchase Soviet assistance with the official gold reserves of the Bank of Spain (see Moscow Gold), obtaining armament of marginal quality that, in addition, was sold at deliberately inflated prices. The cost for the Republic of the Soviet support raised more than US$500 million, which made up two-thirds of the gold reserves that Spain had at the beginning of the war.
The troops of the International Brigades represented the largest foreign contingent of troops fighting for the Republicans. Roughly 30,000 foreign nationals from a "claimed" 53 nations fought in the various brigades.
Ireland was the only country where pro-Franco volunteers outnumbered the anti-Franco volunteers. Despite the declaration by the Irish government that participation in the war was illegal, 700 of Eoin O\'Duffy\'s followers ("The Blueshirts") went to Spain to fight on Franco\'s side (around 250 other Irishmen went to fight for the Republicans). On arrival, however, the Irish contingent refused to fight the Basques for Franco, seeing parallels between their recent struggle and Basque aspirations. They saw their primary role in Spain as fighting communism, rather than defending Spain\'s territorial integrity. Eoin O\'Duffy\'s men saw little fighting in Spain and were sent home by Franco after being accidentally fired on by Spanish Nationalist troops.
As war proceeded in the Northern front, the Republican authorities arranged the evacuation of children. These Spanish War children were shipped to Britain, Belgium, the Soviet Union, other European countries and Mexico. Those in Western European countries returned to their families after the war, but many of those in the Soviet Union, from Communist families, remained and experienced the Second World War and its effects on the Soviet Union.
Like the Republican side, the Nationalist side of Franco also arranged evacuations of children, women and elderly from war zones. Refugee camps for those civilians evacuated by the Nationalists were set up in Portugal, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
In the 1930s Spain also became a focus for pacifist organizations including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League and the War Resisters\' International (whose president was the British MP and Labour Party leader George Lansbury).
With their focus on government action and military reaction, and against the background of the terrible violence that took place, academic historians, authors, journalists and film-makers have all paid attention to the great political machines that were at work, and have largely overlooked many non-governmental international and grass roots movements including, as they are now called, the \'insumisos\' (\'defiant ones\', i.e., conscientious objectors) who argued and worked for non-violent strategies.
Prominent Spanish pacifists such as Amparo Poch y Gascón and José Brocca supported the Republicans. As American author Scott H. Bennett has demonstrated, \'pacifism\' in Spain certainly did not equate with \'passivism\', and the dangerous work undertaken and sacrifices made by pacifist leaders and activists such as Poch and Brocca show that \'pacifist courage is no less heroic than the military kind\' (Bennett, 2003: 67–68). Brocca argued that Spanish pacifists had no alternative but to make a stand against fascism. He put this stand into practice by various means including organising agricultural workers to maintain food supplies and through humanitarian work with war refugees.Bennett, Scott, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963, Syracuse NY, Syracuse University Press, 2003; Prasad, Devi, War is A Crime Against Humanity: The Story of War Resisters\' International, London, WRI, 2005. Also see Hunter, Allan, White Corpsucles in Europe, Chicago, Willett, Clark & Co., 1939; and Brown, H. Runham, Spain: A Challenge to Pacifism, London, The Finsbury Press, 1937.
Nationalist aircraft bomb Madrid in late November 1936.
Atrocities were committed on both sides during the war.Spanish Civil War: Casualties The use of terrorism against civilians foreshadowed World War II.
At least 50,000 people were executed during the civil war.Spanish Civil WarA revelatory account of the Spanish civil war In his recent, updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor "reckons Franco\'s ensuing \'white terror\' claimed 200,000 lives. The \'red terror\' had already killed 38,000.""Men of La Mancha". Rev. of Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain. The Economist (June 22, 2006). Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."Julius Ruiz, "Defending the Republic: The García Atadell Brigade in Madrid, 1936". Journal of Contemporary History 42.1 (2007):97. In Checas de Madrid, César Vidal comes to a nationwide total of 110,965 victims of Republican repression; 11,705 people being killed in Madrid alone.International justice begins at home by Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami Herald, August 4, 2003
The atrocities of the Bando Nacional were common and were frequently ordered by authorities in order to eradicate any trace of leftism in Spain; many such acts were committed by radical groups during the first weeks of the war. These included the aerial bombing of cities in the Republican territory, carried out mainly by the Luftwaffe volunteers of the Condor Legion and the Italian air force volunteers of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Guernica, and other cities); the execution of school teachers (because the efforts of the Republic to promote laicism and to displace the Church from the education system by closing religious schools were considered by the Bando Nacional side as an attack on the Church); the execution of individuals because of accusations of anti-clericalism; the massive killings of civilians in the cities they captured; the execution of unwanted individuals (including non-combatants such as trade-unionists and known Republican sympathisers), etcExamples of this kind of tactics on the Nationalist side are the Bombing of Guernica and the Massacre of Badajoz [1], [2]. Other stories of people who were murdered by the nationalists because of their beliefs: [3][4] (Sources in Spanish)..
Atrocities on the Republican side were committed by government agencies[citation needed], ruling parties[citation needed] and groups of radical leftists (mainly Communists and anarchists)[citation needed] against alleged rebel supporters, including the nobility, former landowners, rich farmers, industrialists, non-socialist workers and people associated to the Church. Atrocities by the Republicans have been termed Spain\'s red terror by those on the Nationalist side. Republican attacks on the Catholic Church, associated strongly with support for the old monarchist and hierarchical establishment, were particularly controversial.
Nearly 7,000 clerics were killed and churches, convents and monasteries were attacked (see Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War). Some 13 bishops, 4184 diocesan priests, 2365 male religious (among them 114 Jesuits) and 283 nuns were killed. There are unverified accounts of Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads and/or being thrown down mine shafts, as well as priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive. Julio de la Cueva, "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War" Journal of Contemporary History 33.3 (July 1998): 355. Other repressive actions in the Republican side were committed by specific factions such as the Stalinist NKVD (the Soviet secret police)Article that explains how the Stalinist NKVD tortured the prisoners in the Checas: 1. Note that these crimes committed by the NKVD were carried out not only against Nationalists, but also against all those who did not share their ideology, even if they were fighting on the Republican side. In addition, many Republican politicians, such as Lluís Companys the Catalan nationalist president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the autonomous government of Catalonia –which remained initially loyal to the Republic before proclaiming independence from it– carried out numerous actions to mediate in cases of deliberate executions of the clergyHistory website where this situation is explained: 1..
In the early days of the war, over 50,000 people who were caught on the "wrong" side of the lines were assassinated or executed. The numbers were probably comparable on both sides. In these paseos ("promenades"), as the executions were called, the victims were taken from their refuges or jails by armed people to be shot outside of town. The corpses were abandoned or interred in graves dug by the victims themselves. Local police just noted the apparition of the corpses. Probably the most famous such victim was the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca. The outbreak of the war provided an excuse for settling accounts and resolving long-standing feuds. Thus, this practice became widespread during the war in conquered areas. In most areas, even within a single given village, both sides committed assassinations.
Any hope of a quick ending to the war was dashed on July 21, the fifth day of the rebellion, when the Nationalists captured the main Spanish naval base at Ferrol in northwestern Spain. This encouraged the Fascist nations of Europe to help Franco, who had already contacted the governments of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy the day before. On July 26, the future Axis Powers cast their lot with the Nationalists. A rebel force under Colonel Beorlegui Canet, sent by General Emilio Mola, advanced on Guipúzcoa. On September 5th, after heavy fighting it took Irún closing the French border to the Republicans. On September 13th the Basques surrendered San Sebastián to the Nationalists who then advanced toward their capital, Bilbao but were halted by the Republican militias on the border of Viscaya at the end of September. The capture of Guipúzcoa had isolated the Republican provinces in the north.
To the south, Nationalist forces under Franco won another victory on September 27 when they relieved the Alcázar at Toledo. A Nationalist garrison under Colonel Moscardo had held the Alcázar in the center of the city since the beginning of the rebellion, resisting for months against thousands of Republican troops who completely surrounded the isolated building. The inability to take the Alcázar was a serious blow to the prestige of the Republic, as it was considered inexplicable in view of their overwhelming numerical superiority in the area. Two days after relieving the siege, Franco proclaimed himself Generalísimo and Caudillo ("chieftain") while forcibly unifying the various and diverse Falangist, Royalist and other elements within the Nationalist cause.
In October, the Francoist troops launched a major offensive toward Madrid, reaching it in early November and launching a major assault on the city on November 8. The Republican government was forced to shift from Madrid to Valencia, out of the combat zone, on November 6. However, the Nationalists\' attack on the capital was repulsed in fierce fighting between November 8 and 23. A contributory factor in the successful Republican defense was the arrival of the International Brigades, though only around 3000 of them participated in the battle. Having failed to take the capital, Franco bombarded it from the air and, in the following two years, mounted several offensives to try to encircle Madrid. (See also Siege of Madrid (1936-39))
On November 18, Germany and Italy officially recognized the Franco regime, and on December 23, Italy sent "volunteers" of its own to fight for the Nationalists.
With his ranks being swelled by Italian troops and Spanish colonial soldiers from Morocco, Franco made another attempt to capture Madrid in January and February of 1937, but failed again.
On February 21 the League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign national "volunteers" went into effect. The large city of Málaga was taken on February 8. On March 7 German Condor Legion equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes arrived in Spain; on April 26 the Legion was responsible for the infamous massacre of hundreds, including numerous women and children, at Guernica in the Basque Country; the event was committed to notoriety by Picasso. Two days later, Franco\'s army overran the town.
After the fall of Guernica, the Republican government began to fight back with increasing effectiveness. In July, they made a move to recapture Segovia, forcing Franco to pull troops away from the Madrid front to halt their advance. Mola, Franco\'s second-in-command, was killed on June 3, and in early July, despite the fall of Bilbao in June, the government actually launched a strong counter-offensive in the Madrid area, which the Nationalists repulsed with some difficulty. The clash was called "Battle of Brunete" (Brunete is a town in the province of Madrid).
After that, Franco regained the initiative, invading Aragón in August and then taking the city of Santander. After the Basque nationalists surrendered and two months of bitter fighting in Asturias, Gijón finally fell in late October, which effectively ended the war in the North of Spain.
Meanwhile, on August 28, the Vatican recognized Franco, and at the end of November, with Franco\'s troops closing in on Valencia, the government had to move again, this time to Barcelona.
The Battle of Teruel was an important confrontation between Nationalist and Republican troops. The city belonged to the Nationalists at the beginning of the battle, but the Republicans conquered it in January. The Francoist troops launched an offensive and recovered the city by February 22. On March 7th, the Nationalists launched the Aragon Offensive. By April 14, they had pushed through to the Mediterranean Sea, cutting the Republican government-held portion of Spain in two. The Republican government tried to sue for peace in May)Thomas, p. 820-821 but Franco demanded unconditional surrender, and the war raged on. The Nationalist army pressed southward from Teruel and along the coast toward the capital of the Republic at Valencia but were halted in heavy fighting along the fortified XYZ Line.
The Republican government then launched an all-out campaign to reconnect their territory in the Battle of the Ebro, beginning on July 24 and lasting until November 26. The campaign was militarily unsuccessful, and was undermined by the Franco-British appeasement of Hitler in Munich. The concession of Czechoslovakia destroyed the last vestiges of Republican morale by ending all hope of an anti-fascist alliance with the great powers. The retreat from the Ebro all but determined the final outcome of the war. Eight days before the new year, Franco struck back by throwing massive forces into an invasion of Catalonia.
Franco declares the end of the war. However, small pockets of insurgents still fought.
Franco\'s troops conquered Catalonia in a whirlwind campaign during the first two months of 1939. Tarragona fell on January 14, followed by Barcelona on January 26 and Girona on February 5. Five days after the fall of Girona, the last resistance in Catalonia was broken.
On February 27, the governments of the United Kingdom and France recognized the Franco regime.
Only Madrid and a few other strongholds remained for the Republican government forces. Then, on March 28, with the help of pro-Franco forces inside the city (not as effective as described by General Mola in his propagandistic broadcasts of 1936 referring to the so-called "fifth column"), Madrid fell to the Nationalists. The next day, Valencia, which had held out under their guns for close to two years, also surrendered. Franco proclaimed victory in a radio speech aired on April 1, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered.
After the end of the War, there were harsh reprisals against Franco\'s former enemies,Spain: Repression under Franco after the Civil War when thousands of Republicans were imprisoned and at least 30,000 executed.Spain torn on tribute to victims of Franco Others have calculated these deaths at from 50,000 to 200,000. Many others were put to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, digging canals (La Corchuela, the Canal of the Bajo Guadalquivir), construction of the Valle de los Caídos monument, etc. Hundreds of thousands of other Republicans fled abroad, especially to France and Mexico. Some 500,000 of them fled to France.Spanish Civil War fighters look back
On the other side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps of the French Third Republic, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where 12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions (mostly soldiers from the Durruti Division (French) Camp Vernet Website). The 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs were divided into four categories (Brigadists, pilots, Gudaris and ordinary Spaniards). The Gudaris (Basques) and the pilots easily found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in France, were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification" according to the Law of Political Responsibilities.
After the proclamation by Marshall Pétain of the Vichy regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round-up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirables", they were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. About 5,000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp Film documentary on the website of the Cité nationale de l\'histoire de l\'immigration (French). The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who had been named by the Chilean President Pedro Aguirre Cerda special consul for immigration in Paris, was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping more than 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old cargo ship, the Winnipeg.
After the official end of the war, guerrilla war was waged on an irregular basis, well into the 1950s, being gradually reduced by the scant support from an exhausted population and military defeats. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, who also fought in the French resistance against the Nazis, invaded the Val d\'Aran in northwest Catalonia, but they were defeated after 10 days.
In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragón and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and peasants collectivised land and industry, and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government. This revolution was opposed by both the Soviet-supported communists, who ultimately took their orders from Stalin\'s politburo (which feared a loss of control), and the Social Democratic Republicans (who worried about the loss of civil property rights). The agrarian collectives had considerable success despite opposition and lack of resources, as Franco had already captured lands with some of the richest natural resources.Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship
As the war progressed, the government and the communists were able to leverage their access to Soviet arms to restore government control over the war effort, through both diplomacy and force. Anarchists and the POUM were integrated with the regular army, albeit with resistance; the POUM was outlawed and falsely denounced as an instrument of the fascists. In the May Days of 1937, many hundreds or thousands of anti-fascist soldiers fought one another for control of strategic points in Barcelona, recounted by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia.
Important figures in the Spanish Civil War
| Figures identified with the Nationalist side | Figures identified with the Republican / Loyalist side | Others |
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Journalists and spies
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Political parties and organizations in the Spanish Civil War
| The Popular Front (Republican) | Supporters of the Popular Front (Republican) | Nationalists (Francoist) |
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