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, also called
Nationalists (nacionales), received the support of neighbouring Portugal and the major
European Axis powers of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
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 war became notable for the passion
and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.
Prelude to the war
Historical context
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, and 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 1924, but was replaced with
the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In 1928, this was succeeded by another two years of monarchy until 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 and the expulsion of Muslims, as well as military cut-downs and reforms, created strong opposition from
the former elite.
1933 election and aftermath
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 governmentan dln vfv ,
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 repression 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.)
1936 Popular Front victory and aftermath
As internal disagreements mounted in the coalition, strikes were frequent, and there were pistol attacks on unionists and
clergy[3]. 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.[4] The Basque
nationalists were not officially part of the 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.[5]
From the Comintern's point of view the increasingly powerful, if fragmented, left and the
weak right were an optimum situation. 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).[6]
Azaña becomes president
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."[7] 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.[7]
Rising tensions — political violence
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 of 160 religious buildings.[8]
Deaths of Castillo and Calvo Sotelo
On July 12, 1936, José Castillo, a member of the Socialist Party and lieutenant in the Assault Guards, a special police corps created to deal with urban violence, was murdered by a far
right group in Madrid. The following day José Calvo Sotelo, the leader of the conservative opposition in the Cortes (Spanish
parliament), was killed in revenge by Luis Cuenca who was operating in a commando unit of the Civil Guard led by Captain Fernando
Condés Romero. Condés was close to the Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto, and although there is no indication that Prieto was
complicit in Cuenca's decision to shoot Calvo Sotelo, the assassination of a member of parliament aroused suspicions and strong
reactions amongst the Center and the Right.[9] Calvo Sotelo
was the most prominent Spanish monarchist and had protested against what he viewed as an 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.[10]
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 had vowed that
Calvo Sotelo's speech would be his last speech in the Cortes.[11][12] 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.
Outbreak of the war
National military revolt
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 General Manuel Goded y 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 Morocco[13] to see
Juan March Ordinas, where the Nationalist Army of Africa were almost unopposed in
assuming control.
Government reaction
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. The
anarchists would control Barcelona and much of the surrounding Aragonese and Catalan countryside for months. 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 Nationalists took most of northern and northwestern Spain and
also a southern area in central and western Andalusia including Seville.
The combatants
The Republicans
Republicans (also known as Spanish loyalists) received weapons and volunteers from the Soviet
Union, Mexico, the international Socialist movement and
the International Brigades; there were even American volunteers, the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 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.[14]
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.[15]
The Nationalists
The Nationalists on the contrary opposed these separatist movements. The Nationalists had a generally wealthier, more
conservative base of Catholic, monarchist, centralist, landowning and fascist interests, and they favoured the centralization of
state power. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well as most Roman Catholic
clergy, supported the Nationalists, while Portugal provided logistical support. Ireland sent
740 men to fight for the Nationalists and 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.
Other factions in the war
The active participants in the war covered the entire gamut of the political positions and ideologies of the time. The
Nationals (nacionales) side included the Carlists and Legitimist monarchists, Spanish nationalists, fascists of the Falange,
Catholics, and most conservatives and monarchist liberals. On the Republican side
were Basque and Catalan nationalists,
socialists, communists, liberals and anarchists.
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.[16][17] 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.[18] Similarly, many of the massacres perpetrated by the Republican side targeted the Catholic
clergy. Franco's religious Moroccan Muslim troops found this repulsive 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 of the Nationalists. 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. Pope John Paul II later beatified several hundred people murdered for being priests or nuns, and Pope Benedict XVI will beatify almost 500 more on October 28, 2007.[19] [20] [21]. 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.[22]
The Republicans were also split among themselves. The left and the 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. 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.
Foreign involvement
-
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
Italians 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 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.
Evacuation of children
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.
Pacifism in Spain
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 PM 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.[23]
Atrocities during the war
Nationalist aircraft bomb Madrid in late November 1936.
Spanish Leftists Shoot at a statue of Christ
Atrocities were committed on both sides during the war. The use of terror against civilians foreshadowed World War II.
The atrocities of the Nationalist side 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
Nationalist 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), etc[24].
Atrocities on the Republican side were
committed by government agencies[citation needed], ruling parties[citation needed] and groups of radical leftists (mainly anarchists)[citation needed] against alleged rebel supporters, including the nobility, former
landowners, rich farmers, industrialists, non-socialist workers and 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. [25] Other repressive actions in the
Republican side were committed by specific factions such as the Stalinist NKVD (the Soviet secret
police)[26]. Note that these crimes committed by
the NKVD were carried out not only against the 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 leaders, such as Lluís Companys,
president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the autonomous government of
Catalonia, which remained loyal to the Republic, carried out numerous actions to mediate in cases of deliberate executions of the
clergy[27].
The war: 1936
Situation of the fronts in August
1936.
-
In the early days of the war, over 50,000 people who were caught on the "wrong" side of the lines were assassinated or
summarily 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
