By the second half of 1938, several Republican cities had been fallen into Nationalists hand. General Rojo, had criticised the actions of his men saying, “It will take a long time for the leaders of our army to behave properly”, and was aware that while the Rebels had been breaking through Aragon, Barcelona was being bombed almost daily. The Republicans, who felt abandoned after the Munich Agreement and the impassivity of the international leaders, started to suffer desertions. Trapped in the defensive lines of Catalonia, the Republicans incited the Battle of the Ebro River. The Republican charges initially broke the Nationalist columns, but then, the Italian and German planes made the advance impossible and the Republican forces had to cross the Ebro River again and return to their defences. The Republicans suffered around 40,000 casualties, with 20,000 being captured and later imprisoned or shot at the end of the battle. The Italian troops entered in Catalonia facing resistance, and conquered Barcelona in a few days. The massive exile of Republican loyalists triggered France into closing the borders, which provoked the capture of 60,000 soldiers and civilians who were running away from the Republicans. Menorca surrendered at the beginning of 1939, and all the forces there went into exile to avoid capture. With a failed Nationalist coup in Cartagena, the Republicans lost the Navy. In the meantime, in Madrid, Coronel Casado had surrendered and delivered the city to Franco, what provoked a fight inside the own Republican forces defencing the city. Valencia and La Mancha fell immediately. All the Republican politicians had gone into exile, to France (where they would be later captured by the Gestapo), the UK, or Mexico, had been shot or imprisoned. The war was over. The dictatorship was on.

Caption: A Nationalist soldier, probably an Italian volunteer from the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, stands behind a destroyed cannon in Valencia, Spain, 1937.

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Two years before the war started, in 1934, during the Conservative era, a miner’s revolution was held in Northern Spain. Partially inspired by the French Revolution, but mostly by the Russian one, thousands of workers assaulted their landlords’ possessions and declared them for public service. In a week, General Franco (at the time serving the Republic) crushed the rebellion in one week. What happened there was the prologue of the War. Since the creation of the Republic, a group of high-rank officers, generals Mola, Sanjurjo, and Franco, had been planning a fascist-inspired far-right coup d’état against the Government. General Sanjurjo tried one, but failed and was sent into exile. But the time had changed. In 1936, it was well-known that although the generals didn’t have the full support of the common people, the Army would back a direct attack against the Republic. And so, with a Spain already frightened by the street attacks between far-right Falangists and socialist militia, the so-called Nationalists generals declared the state of war against the Republic and hold an uprising against the legitimate and elected government in 17-18 July 1936. And against all odds, the coup failed. The only zones were the coup was able to gain power were certain parts of the country were the conservative Galicia, Castile, and the cities of Sevilla and Granada, and the strategic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza. Madrid, Barcelona, Asturias, Andalucía, Valencia, and Menorca remained faithful to the Republic, and the mobilization started. Without knowing it, the war had already taken place. Franco, with the support of the Moroccan Army (which had been told that the Republic wanted to abolish Allah), was the only way the Nationalists would have a chance. But the Strait of Gibraltar prevented the fascist troops from crossing. And then, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy joined the war.

Caption: General Francisco Franco welcomes who seems to be General Mola, from a Nazi German supplied Junker-52.

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After the Battle of Guadalajara, the Nationalist troops gave up in the attack to Madrid. In the meantime, the North, Asturias, Cantabria, and Bilbao, in the Basque Country, one of the most industrialized and modern regions of the country, had prepared an impregnable line of defence so that the coup forces could not occupy it. On 26 April 1937, several planes from the Nazi Germany ‘Condor Legion’ dropped thousands of incendiary bombs over the unoccupied city of Guernica uninterruptedly for three hours, killing up to 1,500 civilians in what is believed to be the first air attack targeting only civilians. The operation was totally acknowledged by Franco and the Nationalists, who later led a propaganda campaign to appease the international media claiming they didn’t know nothing. And then, Alejandro Goicoechea deserted. Goicoechea was the engineer who had planned the whole defence of the North. With this information in the hands of the Nationalist, the line was useless. To distract the enemy, the Government led the Battle of Brunete, which ended with an indecisive result, with higher casualties in the Republican side. Then, the Nationalists attacked further North, occupying Zaragoza in the East -approaching Catalonia-, being eventually stopped in the city of Belchite, which was destroyed to the grounds. By the end of 1937, the North was practically conquered. With the occupation of Northern Valencia in the first half of 1938, only Madrid, Catalonia, La Mancha, the island of Menorca, and the Eastern regions were still controlled by the Republicans. The Spanish colonies had also been defeated and were now in Nationalist hands. Without foreign reinforcements, and with the professional troops used by the Rebels, the war would end very soon.

Caption: The ruins of the destroyed city of Guernica, 1937. Bodies can be seen.

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One night, from 13 to 14 April 1931, Spain changed. The history of Spain is indeed not plain, and actions that happened twelve centuries ago still resound in the vast plains of La Mancha, and are still debated in both bars and schools around the country. The 19th century was an era of depression and political corruption. Even when the people decided to exile the Bourbons, and welcome a foreign and more democratic king, he renounced and a short Republic was followed by the return of the Bourbonic monarchy under Alfonso XII and Alfonso XIII. In the 20th century, Spain was no longer an Empire. Alfonso XIII had failed to maintain the colonies, and Morocco was unstable. General Primo de Rivera would perform a dictatorship with the consent of the king from 1923 until his natural death in 1930. And then, after failed attempts of rebellion, regular elections were summoned the 12 April 1931. What first was supposed to be municipal elections were interpreted by the people as a plebiscite and, since the Republican candidacies gained the majority, the city councils declared the Second Spanish Republic. The Second Spanish Republic was an unstable time. The first period was a period of lefts, which with difficulties carried out various reforms and the declaration of freedoms, such as religious. It was followed by two conservative years, which stopped the reforms and re-distributed power between the clergy and the bourgeoisie. And then, in another night of 1936 that would change Spain forever, the Popular Front won the elections

Amplifications: It is widely accepted by the Academics that one cannot properly speak of “Spain” as a country or nation until 1715, when the absolutist French king Felipe V was appointed ruler of Spain after defeating opposing forces in the War of the Spanish Succession. Before this unification, Historians talk of “Hispanic monarchy”, because the feeling of a united Spain was concealed under the union of different kingdoms (Castile, and Aragon, and eventually Portugal), with different laws, customs and institutions. The turning point of 1715 marked the destruction of the laws, institutions, statues, and rulers on the Crown of Aragon, when Castile’s centralization powers were introduced by force instead. The years passed, but the memory in both sides did not. The monarchical power increased decade by decade, and, after the plane Spaniards expelled the French troops during the Peninsular War, the Illustrated ideals were straitened by the Bourbonic authorities. Concerning the controversial Elections of 1936, where a historian pointed to fraud, these investigations have been partially denied and described as biased, since several cases of manipulation are known in both parties, but especially in the conservative, which would not have changed the results at all. Historians of all political sensibilities such as Hugh Thomas, Broué and Témine, Bolloten, Catell, Malefakis, Abella, Aróstegui, Javier Tusell, Stanley G. Payne, Edward Hallett Carr, Juan Pablo Fusi, Santos Juliá, Tuñón de Lara, Ángel Viñas and others, admit the electoral victory of the Republican left. Caption: Proclamation of the Spanish Rpeublic, 14/04/1936, Alfonso Sánchez Portela.

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The war was over, but Franco’s plans weren’t. The Nationalists, who had promised the people to restore the monarchy and create a new and clean government, started an authoritarian dictatorship that would last 40 years, from 1939 to 1975. 500,000 Republican exiled to France, hoping that the Allies would liberate Spain. Churchill, nevertheless, did the opposite: bribed the dome near Franco, while the Americans introduced a capitalist market in the dictatorship, to ensure its loyalty during the Cold War. The essence of Franco’s regime was repression: thousands were killed or prosecuted, Catalan and regional laws were banned, women rights fell back 50 years, homosexuality was prohibited, the opposition was persecuted, Arts and entertainment were null, and only one party and union were allowed. In the 60s, the dictatorship opened the borders, required by the European Union, and the economy began to recover in what has been called a ‘miracle’, given the situation of the country after the war. Spain is still nowadays the second country in the world in terms of number of missing persons whose remains have not been recovered or identified after Cambodia. With the dead of Francisco Franco in 1975, the country declared his opposition to a new regime, which earned it a slow entry into the democratic institutions of the time. Recently, a progressive government created the Historical Memory law, which ensured the recovery of bodies of reprisals and the withdrawal of monuments, streets and Francoist plates. During the last years of conservative government, this law has not been fulfilled, and to this day still exist hundreds of monuments that glorify the dictatorship.

Caption: A Moroccan guard in a Francoist parade, during the war.

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