A few months ago I wrote about the 75th anniversary of the proclamation
of the
Second Spanish Republic
which was celebrated throughout the state. That weekend I visited a fantastic
exposition of Republican and Revolutionary war propaganda posters, in
Segorbe.
Today, Spain remembers the beginning of the end.
During the evening of the 17th of July and morning of the 18th, a group of
generals of the Spanish regular army raised against the democratically elected
left-wing government of the Republic. History says that the murdering of
Calvo-Sotelo, a right-wing leader, was what finally provoked the conflict.
It was no secret that the same right-wing and some elements in the army had
been conspiring for weeks about an uprise. The only question was when,
but the government was fooled by general Mola and didn't take really effective
measures to prevent it.
Warning from sanitary authorities against venereal diseases
Mola and Sanjurjo planned to start taking over official buildings and army
quarters and quickly seize control of the major cities. During the first hours
of their rebelion, they managed to take over most of the southern regions in
Andalusia, Extremadura and parts of the Northwest, plus most of the islands
and the Moroccan protectorate area. Meanwhile, the Republic did not manage to
react quickly due to the weakness of the government, and in the first days
of the crisis, the government changed a few times. Finally, the Republican
parties decided that to defend the state they should give arms to the unions,
and soon after many militia groups were getting organised in the cities, and
columns sent off to liberate other towns.
Solidarity of Catalunya to the Basque front
The insurrection was suffocated in Barcelona after some heavy fighting
against the military in the Montju c castle; the Anarchists of the
CNT grew strong
in Catalunya and Arag n, and offered good resistance in those fronts.
After the first days of the coupe d'etat, it was clear neither the
legitimate government or the rebels calculated how things would go after the
first days. The government was confident in being able to end the rebelion
as they did four years before; the fascists thought they would have quickly
brought down the government with a successful coup. But after the first week,
the country was divided in two halves, and both sides of the conflict were
keen on fighting, due to the big social fracture during the last months of the
government.
The Republic asked for help to the League of Nations, but the
United Kingdom and France decided not to intervene, scared about the conflict
trespassing the Spanish borders and becoming another bloody war in European
fields. The only official external aid came from the USSR and the
International Brigades,
formed by volunteers of more than 50 nations. Some well-known personalities
like Ernest Hemingway or George Orwell came to aid as well. Orwell wrote about
his life-changing experience in a Barcelona immerse in the social revolution,
where he joined the anti-stalinist socialist party POUM. Badly wounded in the
neck, he left the front and went back to Barcelona, and witnessed the assault
of the Telef nica by the communists against the anarchists, during
the fets de maig, after which the POUM was declared illegal. Orwell
captured his experiences in the frontline and Barcelona in his book
Homage to Catalonia.
To defend Madrid is to defend Catalunya
Franco and Mola, aided by the Northafrican troops and soon after by their
fascist allies of Italy and Germany, didn't have big problems seizing
the Basque Country and Asturies in the North, but not before making the town of
Gernika disappear
below the nazi
Condor Legion bombing,
in what would be a test for the massive aereal bombings of Word War II.
The battle for Madrid was fierce, and the city wasn't occupied until the
very last days of the war. The long defence of the capital made was
immortalised in the famous phrase No pasar n.
Madrid's No pasar n
During the war, anarchist groups controlling fields and towns in Arag n and
Catalunya managed to bring a Social Revolution to the area. The people
collectivised the land and industries, administered by local assemblies. This
experience is regarded as the time when Libertarian Communism has been
successful. The experience ended dramatically when the anarchists were
treasoned and blocked by the communists, and eventually defeated by Franco at
the front.
Each bullet for a target
After the first and a half years, the fronts had stabilised in Madrid and
the East of Andalusia, until early in 1939, Barcelona fell in Franco's hands,
after the bloody Batalla de l'Ebre, being followed by Girona and the
rest of Catalunya. The fate of the democratic state was clear. Two months
later, Madrid fell and Val ncia and the small area still under Republican
control surrended.
Robert Capa's Muerte de un miliciano
Franco declared a totalitarian regime to, according to the fascists,
reconcile the two Spains. In the first five years of the regime, up to
100.000 were executed in the franquist repression, including the Catalan
president, Llu s Companys and many intellectuals. The dictatorship continued
executing people until two months before Franco's death, 36 years later.
Hundreds of thousands also had to exile in M xico, France and other
destinations, leaving Spain in ashes, road gutters full of scattered bodies
and the population facing famine. The cultural elite left the country, making
the state's clock go back at least a decade. Their reconciliation really
meant humiliation and repression. Many people were also murdered during the
war behind republican and rebel lines, but the genocide of the aftermath had
was unmatchable.
The Republic promoted education among the troups
It is a bit late to restore the dignity of the victims, but not
too late. Some associations have been fighting since the end of
Franco's regime to get some kind of public recognition for their suffering,
for their priceless fight for the legal and democratically elected Republic,
for the people who didn't make it.
Excellent anarchist poster rejecting the politisation
of children by any of the three loyal groups
Other people reject these efforts banning them of "revisionism". Not too
surprisingly, these are the sons or grandsons of the people who won the war.
The current government is about to pass a Historic Memory law which aims to
give recognition to all these people who gave their lives for an ideal and
freedom. Unfortunately, due to pressures from the right, it is probable that
the text will be ammended to make it more acceptable by them. I fear it will
end up not pleasing the victims at all.
I have a passion for Spanish Civil War related matters, and in the last
years I tried to use any opportunity to listen to my Catalan grandmother talk
about war affairs in Barcelona, and my grandfather, from a town in the middle
of the Republican side of the Teruel front, but born in a very catholic family,
about how the war went on in Vall and the nearby mountains.
From the defensive No pasar n to the encouraging Pasaremos!
I know my grandfather only told me the less compromising stories, like how
he was sent to dig refuges until he was 16 and apt to fight in the Front, or
how he was put in charge of hiding the church's valuable relics in a few
barns. He never told me about how life was after the war in the small town.
It is dramatic to see that all the people who were old enough to have a sense
of what was going on at the time are so old that these unvaluable memories and
stories will be mostly gone in ten years.
(Most of the pictures are taken from the
Sociedad Ben fica de Historiadores Aficionados y Creadores'
website, which has a huge documented catalog)