The Spanish Civil War and Francoism

1. Deep-Seated Political Tensions and Factional Conflicts Behind the Outbreak of the War

The Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939) collapsed under profound and long-standing social, political, and institutional fractures.
Spain was sharply divided across class, regional, ideological, and military lines, preventing the stabilization of a democratic system.

Class & Economic Inequality

• Wealth and land ownership were intensely unequal: 2% of the population owned 70% of arable land, leaving millions of peasants impoverished and fueling radicalization.

• Attempts by the Republic to pass agrarian and labor reforms moved too slowly, disappointing left-wing supporters while provoking landowners and the Church.
  
  

Political Fragmentation

• The Republic’s political landscape was fractured, with republicans, socialists, anarchists, communists, monarchists, Carlists, and conservatives all competing for influence.

• Anti-state ideologies, especially anarcho-syndicalism (CNT), rejected parliamentary governance altogether and advocated revolutionary change.
  
  

The Military Against the Republic

• Internal crises—from the Disaster of 1898 to brutal colonial campaigns in Morocco—shaped a younger generation of officers who embraced authoritarian nationalism.

• The army viewed itself as the “defender of Spain,” hostile to secular democracy and especially to regional autonomy in Catalonia and the Basque Country.

• Republican reforms that reduced military privileges deepened resentment among officers.
  
  

Political Crises Before the War

• 1933 elections: Women voted for the first time, often influenced by the Church; conservatives won and rolled back reforms, angering the left.

• The Asturian miners’ uprising (1934) and its brutal suppression by the army widened polarization.

• 1936 elections: The Popular Front narrowly won; the right interpreted this as the beginning of a communist revolution.
  
  

Immediate Trigger (July 1936)

• A cycle of political assassinations—Jorge Bardina (nationalist) and José Calvo Sotelo (right-wing leader)—sparked a military conspiracy already prepared by generals Mola, Sanjurjo, and Franco.

• Their coup of July 17–19, 1936, expected to triumph quickly, failed because workers’ militias armed themselves and many urban military units remained loyal to the Republic.

• This failure transformed a coup into a three-year civil war.
  

2. Foreign Intervention and International Actors

The Spanish Civil War quickly became an international test arena for rising ideological blocs in Europe.

Support for the Nationalists (Franco)

• Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy provided aircraft, tanks, troops, and strategic bombing.

• Portugal aided with troops and logistics.
  This foreign support was decisive in turning Franco’s forces into a well-equipped modern army.
  

Support for the Republic

• The Soviet Union supplied weapons, advisors, and directed communist strategy within the Republic.

• Mexico sent arms and offered diplomatic recognition.

• Thousands of foreign volunteers joined the International Brigades.
  
  

Western Democracies Remain Neutral

• Britain, France, and the United States adopted a policy of “non-intervention,” which in practice only harmed the Republic.

Eyewitnesses and Intellectuals

• George Orwell, who fought in Catalonia, depicted the war’s complexity in Homage to Catalonia.

• Emma Goldman defended the anarchist movement internationally.

• Mujeres Libres, a 20,000-member anarchist feminist group, challenged gender roles but were banned from combat in 1938.
  
  

Internal Divisions Among Republicans: The May Events (1937)

• Violent clashes erupted in Barcelona between:

  • Communists (PSUC, UGT, Generalitat police) vs.

  • Anarchists (CNT-FAI) and POUM.
    
    

• Conflict centered on strategy:

  • Communists: “Win the war first, then make the revolution”
    

  • Anarchists/POUM: “Make the revolution to win the war.”
    
    

The crisis ended with Andreu Nin (POUM leader) kidnapped and assassinated by Soviet agents, and POUM outlawed.
These divisions crippled the Republican war effort.

Ideological Divisions and Their Impact on Domestic and International Perceptions

The war was widely understood as a symbolic global conflict between fascism and anti-fascism, but internally it was even more complicated.

Nationalist Ideology

• Catholic, authoritarian, militaristic, and anti-communist.

• Promoted a unified Spanish identity, denouncing regional autonomy as a threat to the nation.

• Presented the war as a “crusade” to save Spain from atheism and Marxism.
  
  

Republican Ideology

• Pluralistic and divided: liberal republicans, socialists, communists, anarchists, Trotskyists (POUM).

• Internationally viewed as defenders of democracy, but internal rivalries weakened domestic unity.

• The May Events, the persecution of POUM, and Soviet control over policy undermined foreign sympathies.
  
  

Globally, the conflict was seen as a preview of World War II, with fascists and anti-fascists rallying to their respective causes

Francoist Rule: Repression, Restructuring, and Catalan Cultural Consequences

After the Nationalist victory in 1939, Franco established a dictatorship lasting until his death in 1975. It was defined by violence, state control, and cultural homogenization.

State Terror and Political Repression

• Tens of thousands were executed in postwar reprisals, including groups like Las Trece Rosas, executed in 1939.

• 400,000 people spent time in prisons or labor camps.

• The Court of Public Order (1963) criminalized any opposition.
  
  

Child Stealing

• Children of Republican women were taken and “re-educated” as loyal Catholics under the belief that leftist parents were biologically or morally degenerate.
  
  

Forced Labor and Monumental Propaganda

• Political prisoners were compelled to build the Valley of the Fallen, a vast monument glorifying Francoist nationalism.
  
  

Catalonia Under Franco

• Catalan (along with Basque, Galician, and other regional languages) was banned from schools, public life, and administration.

• Catalan identity, culture, and literature faced systematic suppression.

• Barcelona’s Via Laietana 43 became a notorious site of torture used by the political police, later trained in part by the FBI and CIA in the 1950s.
  
  

Transition After Franco

• Franco died on November 20, 1975.

• The 1977 Amnesty Law freed political prisoners but also protected regime officials from accountability.

• This contributed to the Pact of Forgetting, where Spanish political leaders agreed to avoid confronting Francoist crimes during democratization.
  
  

Cultural Memory

• In Catalonia, novels like Mercè Rodoreda’s In Diamond Square capture the psychological devastation of war and dictatorship, marking the persistence of trauma in the region’s collective memory.