History
Before the War (1931-1936)
Five years before the beginning of the war, the proclamation of the Republic (democratic government system opposed to the Monarchy) had been welcomed with enthusiasm because the monarchy was falling apart. Up to that moment, Spain was an unevenly divided country, in which the power was held by few landowners, the Church and military forces. The vast majority of the country resented the fact that the king, Alfonso XIII, had backed up Primo de Rivera's dictatorship for seven years. The working class viewed the king as the symbol of repression. He understood the delicate situation he was in and left the country before he was deposed.
Supported by intellectuals and the majority of the people, the Republic was proclaimed on April 14th, 1931. In October, shortly after finishing the new Constitution, the electoral process led to new liberal middle class government formed by a center-left coalition of political parties. The new leader, Manuel Azaña, had a very difficult situation to overcome. First of all, he had to confront the resistance of the privileged and powerful classes, the Church and the military forces. The Catholic Church was openly opposed to any kind of liberalization due to its conservative nature. Another factor, despite being really close to the landowners, was that it had total control of secondary education. The new regime had promised reforms because the levels of illiteracy were too high (almost 40% of the population), and they wanted to develop a lay effective educational system. In less than a year, 10,000 new schools were open. Art and culture spread rapidly throughout the country. Artists and intellectuals became quite involved in this process.
La Barraca was part of this "intellectual offensive." La Barraca ("The Shack") was a university student theater company founded and directed by Federico García Lorca, one of the best Spanish poets and playwrights of the 20th century (and probably of all times). Lorca also acted in the plays. Not only that, but he managed to write some of his best known plays while touring with the group. One example of his world-renowned work is "the Rural Trilogy": Bodas de Sangre, Yerma and La Casa de Bernarda Alba. La Barraca was funded by the Ministry of Education to introduce modern and radical interpretations of classic Spanish dramas to all sorts of audiences in rural and remote areas of the country.
Other important achievements were universal suffrage and the legalization of civil marriages and divorce. These, along with the Land Reform (1932), by which lands were expropriated and given to humble farmers, made both landlords and radical leftist groups unsatisfied. The tensions started to escalate and become a menace.
Republicans and socialists in the government were determined to reduce the Church's power. In less than a month, this anticlericalism radicalized some lower social spheres and became violent. On May 11th, six churches in Madrid were set on fire. Catholics never forgot this incident.
Another big issue was the autonomy granted to Catalonians in 1932. Historically and culturally Basques and Catalonians were quite distinct from the rest of the country and were very advanced. Military forces strongly supported the idea of state unity. This and the previous reasons led to the attempt of general San Jurjo's military coup on August 10, 1932. It did not succeed because the conservative right was not well organized. . .yet.
Even the liberal groups were frustrated because the reforms were advancing too slowly. There was a revival of anarchism as a more violent opposition to the Republic. The anarchist movement had disappeared in the rest of Europe after the Great War, but it grew in Spain, especially in Andalucía and Catalonia. Called CNT, Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (National Confederation of Workers,) it had union ideology as well.
Hunger, misery and some scandals made socialists abandon a discredited government. This deep crisis ended with 1933 elections. The CEDA (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas), a cluster of small right wing parties opposed to Azaña and the Republic, won the elections. When José María Gil Robles, the leader of this very conservative Catholic party, took office he paralyzed all the reforms approved by the previous government. This led to an unsuccessful general strike on October that became an armed rising in Asturias. Gil Robles sent the Legion and the Army of Africa (1) to confront it, an operation that was coordinated by a 33-year-old General called Francisco Franco. About 2000 people were killed and thousands of republicans and socialists were imprisoned. Azaña was accused of encouraging these disturbances, but he had to be released shortly after since no evidence against him was found.
The next couple of years were marked by repression. This helped to forge a coalition of stronger left parties called The Popular Front. This new political group included the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, The Esquerra Party (left-wing party that called for the establishment of a Catalan autonomy) and the Republican Union Party. Their goal was to win in the 1936 elections. The Popular front advocated for a new agrarian reform, amnesty for political prisoners and autonomy for Catalonia. The Anarchists, on the other hand, refused to support the coalition but supported the campaign for the amnesty for the prisoners.
The outcome for this February election was a very tight success for the Popular Front. Immediately after, the new government transferred some of the most involved right-wing military leaders to posts away with the idea of isolating them: they sent Francisco Franco to the Canary Islands, Emilio Mola to Pamplona and introduced the reforms they promised during the electoral campaign. These measures upset the conservatives and as a result, the CEDA activists joined the Falange Española, a fascist political party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933. He believed Spain should have followed the model Benito Mussolini had established in Italy.
The polarized and radicalized situation prevented both sides from dialogue and parliamentary compromise. Some unfortunate episodes like the occupation of private extensions of land in Extremadura or the closure of the Falange offices and incarceration of Primo de Rivera led to an extremely violent situation that was difficult to maintain. For a growing group of military officers, the only way to reestablish the order was a military coup. Mola was in Pamplona, Navarra, where Carlism was particularly strong. The Carlists were a right-wing political movement created in 1833. They opposed liberal secularism and were quite conservative. Mola would plan the coup from there, and Franco would be in charge of the raising in Morocco where he would lead the legion and the Army of Africa. During the San Fermines (2), most of the generals met in Pamplona and some of them did not agree with the rebellion. Primo de Rivera fully supported it.
In the middle of all this chaos, on July 12th, José Castillo, a Republican Assault Guard (3) officer and a socialist, was murdered by Falangists in Madrid. The following day some of Castillo's colleagues took revenge by murdering José Calvo Sotelo. This event resulted in the military uprising generals Mola, Franco and Sanjurjo were planning on July 18th, 1936. The uprising failed in most parts of Spain but Mola's forces were successful in the Canary Islands, Morocco, Seville and Aragon. It would eventually result in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War since Spain was divided in two irreconcilable sides.
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
Most part of the military forces was still loyal to the Republic. The Nationalist Front, on the contrary, had on their side the most effective troops from the Army of Africa and the Legion. They all were in Morocco when Franco assumed command of the force. Franco asked Hitler —who was not very interested in Spain at that time- for help. During the first months of the war they were flown to Seville by German airplanes.
The insurgence was successful at first, as unions and left-wing parties resisted it. In Andalusia, farmers organized revolutionary committees that took over landowner's properties and even city halls.
The situation in Barcelona was going to be different during most of the war. The CNT (Confederación Nacional de Trabajo), an Anarcho-Syndicalist union, was very strong in in Barcelona. They believed in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and opposed any kind of established authority. Right after the revolt, the CNT and the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista)—a revolutionary Communist anti-Stalinist party strongly influenced by Trotsky's political ideas- organized a militia in which all the parties that supported the Revolution were represented to ensure the failure of the revolt.
The insurrection was defeated in five main cities: Bilbao, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga and Valencia and therefore there were "two Spains." On the Nationalist side there were Pamplona, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca and Seville. They controlled the provinces of Galicia, Navarra, most of Castilla and Aragón in the north, and Cádiz, Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva and Cáceres in the south. Not only were these sides opposed in ideology but also in military tactics: the nationals were a very organized, unified and disciplined force, meanwhile on the Republican side every party or union organized its own militia.
The first important battle took place in Badajoz. The city was loyal to the Republic and tried to resist the attacks from general Yagüe and his Nationalist Army. The fight was bitter and cruel, it is said that about 2,000 people were executed. One month after the conquest, Republicans were still being executed. When Republicans in Madrid and other cities heard about these atrocities, they started taking revenge and started executing prisoners. The revolution ended the judicial system, but these tragedies highlighted the necessity of a new system: in the Republican side they established the Popular Tribunals (Tribunales Populares) by which prisoners would have the opportunity to try to defend themselves.
On the outbreak of the conflict, the French prime minister and leader of the socialist party, Leon Blum, initially agreed to send forces to help the Republican Army. Stanley Baldwin, the British prime minister, persuaded him not to do so. Both leaders were afraid of a new international conflict so they called for the Non-Intervention Agreement, by which foreign countries would not get involved in the Spanish Civil War at all. The first meeting of the Non-Intervention Committee took place in London on September 9th, 1936. The agreement was signed by 27 countries that included France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, Portugal and Sweden. This really was a diplomatic strategy by which every country could comply with their own interests: Italy and Germany continued to send troops and arms to the Nationalists. In the case of Germany, Hitler also gave permission for the formation of the Condor Legion (a unit of Nazi Germany's air force sent to Spain to support Franco and his troops).
Stalin did not help the Republic at first, since he was trying to get some kind of agreement with Great Britain and France; he only sent military advisers and food. Later on he sent tanks and aircraft as well as tank drivers and pilots. He firmly believed that the best way to confront the imminent threat of Germany would be an anti-fascist alliance
As a reaction to the Soviet aid to the Republicans, Mussolini's prime minister and Hitler met in Germany and decided to increase theirs.
Roosevelt decided not to get involved in the conflict but allowed the oil company Texaco to provide fuel to the Nationalists.
Maurice Thorez, the French Communist leader wanted to create an international force of volunteers to fight for the Republic. Stalin supported the idea, and in September 1936 the Comintern (Communist International) began organizing the formation of International Brigades. This idea was opposed by Largo Caballero (socialist Prime Minister and later on War Minister) at first, but he finally agreed. About 60,000 French, Greek, Polish, Italian, American, Irish, Australian, Swedish, Swiss and English volunteers joined the International Brigades. The main recruitment center was in Paris, where they would facilitate volunteers' assistance to get to Spain. The base was in Albacete, where men and women were organized in Battalions (Abraham Lincoln Battalion, British Battalion, Dimitrov Battalion, Dombrowski Battalion. . .) sorted according to their origin and experience, although there were mixed ones.
Discipline was one of the values the brigadists wanted to maintain, and this was extremely beneficial to the Popular Front militias. The International Brigades participated in most of the main Battles playing an important role in all of them: defense of Madrid (November 1936), Teruel (December 1937), Jarama (February 1937), Brunete (July 1937), Belchite (June 1937) and Ebro (July-August 1938).
The bombing of Guernica became a world-renowned event because it was the first aerial bombardment in history in which a civilian population was attacked with the apparent intent of producing total destruction. On the 26th of April 1937, 43 German Legion Condor planes bombed the town. The attacks nearly destroyed it entirely. There was no apparent motivation of the attack. This unfortunate event inspired Pablo Ruiz Picasso's painting Guernica, which is recognized internationally as the symbol of the horrors a war can cause.
The siege of Madrid was the longest and the most difficult for the National Army. It started on November 1936 and it continued until 1939. The Nationalist Army entered Madrid on March 27th. There were many attacks in different parts of the city, but no real successes for the Nationalists. Many intellectuals, journalists and writers convened in Madrid: Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, John Dos Passos, Antoine the Saint-Exupéry, Gerda Taro, Robert Capa, Arthur Koestler, Ilya Ehrenburg, George Orwell, W.H. Auden, Sean O'Casey. . .
Valencia and Barcelona were two other difficult targets for the Nationalists. As mentioned before, the vast majority of the people in Barcelona wanted Cataluña's autonomy, and therefore the Republican government. In May 1937 the CNT and the POUM were subdued by the Assault Guard. As a result, the Communist Party gained most of the power. Barcelona was also protected by other resisting cities such as Tarragona. In the final stages of the war, Barcelona was also bombed by the Condor Legion. Barcelona was occupied on January 26th, 1939. That same day, President Negrín had the last government meeting in Spanish ground in the Figueras Castle cellar. Almost a half million of refugees crossed the border that night, including Negrín and his ministers.
For the Catalonians that was the end of the war, but one forth of the country was still Republican and Negrín was still the Prime Minister. He had to go back to negotiate, but Franco had no interest on any kind of pact. When Negrín went back to Spain he established his headquarters in Alicante. Meanwhile, Segismundo Casado, a Republican colonel was trying to negotiate a peace settlement with Franco, who would only accept an unconditional surrender. On March 27th, the Nationalist Army entered Madrid without any kind of opposition. Madrid surrendered and four days later Francisco Franco announced the end of the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of Republican were executed and placed in concentration camps.
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