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Francisco Franco

Leftists exercising their political skill

A Divided Spain to 1934

Spain entered the depression full of bitter divisions. There was an independence movement in Catalonia and another among the Basques. There were divisions between those who believed in religion being separate from the state and those who defended the state-provided privileges of Church. There were anarchists who saw the Church as the leading exploiter of the poor. And working people were split between socialists and syndicalists

Syndicalists were laborers on large estates who believed in "direct action" action rather than voting for representation in a parliament. they were aiming at a federation of "sydicats" rather than power in a centralized government

In power in Spain was a dictator - Miguel Primo de Rivera. Spain's king, Alphonso XIII, supported the dictatorship. And many were opposed to the dictatorship and wanted to replace the king with a republic.

During the depression unrest intensified. Students protested. The army announced that it no longer supported Primo de Rivera, who was sixty but in poor health. Primo de Rivera fled the country and died in Paris in March 1930. A provisional government was established and elections were scheduled for the creation of parliamentary rule, while strikes appeared across Spain and the economy continued to decline.

Elections in April 1931 gave republicans a majority in parliament. A republican government was formed, and King Alphonso fled to France. The new republican government was unable to prevent continued economic decline. Unemployment reached a new high, and land went out of cultivation. The government established the eight-hour day. It gave tenant farmers the right to appeal against increases in rent, gave them protection against eviction and prevented landowners from employing cheap immigrant labor.

Many poor parish priests supported the republicans, while Church journals attacked the republicans as having been bought by Moscow gold. Spain's army, its landed aristocracy and the Church had been prepared to tolerate the republican government so long as it respected their rights and privileges, and feeling that the government had failed at this, they turned hostile.

The Church was also offended by assaults on priests and by mobs setting fire to churches, and monarchists were offended by the suspension of their newspaper.

Syndicalists were expanding their influence and quarreling with parliament's socialists. The socialists were demanding collectivization of farming while other republicans were advocating the continuation of private farming. The government established voting for women as well as men. It legalized divorce, abolished titles of nobility, made legal the expropriation of land and wealth, and it made primary education free, compulsory and completely secularized - which increased displeasure among conservatives.

Amid all these reforms, Spain's Communists were encouraged to believe that it was time to grab power - to go all the way and crush the ruling class with social revolution. But, in January 1932, the government crushed their uprising. Later in 1932 the government banned the Jesuit Order. It began confiscating some Church property, and the government began redistributing land belonging to large estates. In August 1932 a rightist general, José Sanjurjo, led a coup attempt, which went the way of the Communist coup attempt.

In 1933 wages were still falling and workers were still losing their jobs. Landlords were cultivating as little of their lands as possible, partly as a strike against the government. New elections were held in 1933, and having failed to end the economic crisis the incumbents lost. In 1934 a coalition of moderates, rightists and monarchists formed a new government in Madrid. In Catalonia, moderate leftists remained in power. And, unhappy with the government in Madrid, workers in central and northern Spain started a general strike. Catalonia declared itself independent of Madrid. Then Spain's military crushed the general strike and Catalonia's independence, with the loss of thousands of lives.

Civil War

In February 1936 an election gave rise to a "Popular Front" government in Spain, ending two years of rule by a coalition of center and rightist parties. Poor peasants and Spain's labor movement felt empowered by the new government. Peasants began seizing land, and, in the first four months of the new government, 331 strikes erupted. Anarchists now also felt empowered, and they opened prisons.

Anarchists were particularly strong in Barcelona - which had been a refuge for independent-minded people during World War I,  some of them "artistic" types like those who had tried to rule Munich in 1918-19. To many anarchists the Church epitomized oppression and manipulation of the poor. Anarchists set fire to some 70 churches, while attempts to set fires were made against 250 other churches. Seminaries, monasteries and the homes and offices of capitalists were also set aflame. Armed robberies against common people skyrocketed in Barcelona as some felt free to exercise their belief in an immediate distribution of wealth.

Employers retaliated against strikes by locking out their workers.  And just as chaos had brought support of Italy's fascist movement, people flocked to Spain's fascist movement: the Falangists. Running battles erupted in the streets of Spain between Falangists and Leftists, and peopled died.

Spain's Popular Front prime minister, Santiago Quiroga, was unable to cope with the chaos. Conservatives had been provoked. Among them was not the security enjoyed by conservatives in the United States living under the Roosevelt administration. Conservatives in Spain feared the fate of Russia's conservatives. Conservatives dominated the officer corps in the military, and from within the military came a move to overthrow the Popular Front. This followed an incident on July 13, 1936, in which a rightwing economist, jurist and politician, José Calvo Sotelo, was murdered by a leftist force - the Assault Guards, Unified Socialist Youths, and a captain of the government's Civil Guard - who took Sotelo from his home and killed him in a police truck. The government failed to pursue an investigation of the matter, and for some conservative generals it was the last straw. Before the month was over, officers led military garrisons in an uprising in Spanish Morocco and across southwestern Spain. In Spain's two greatest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, their rising against the government failed. Here industrial workers, the labor movement and support for the Popular Front were strong. And the Popular Front continued to control eastern Spain over the whole of eastern and much of the south. southern Spain, while Basque provinces sat on the fence, wanting autonomy above all else.

Leading the rebel forces was Spain's most respected general, Francisco Franco. He had been reared believing in discipline, hierarchy and order. He believed that liberalism had spawned the ultimate anathema to his Catholic conservatism: communism. He believed that overthrowing the Popular Front was a duty.

Franco won the support of Hitler and Mussolini, and the government of Spain won the support of the Soviet Union. Help from Germany started in August, the same month that the 1936 Olympics began in Berlin. Hitler saw advantage for Germany in a regime in Spain that would be at odds with the Leftist regime in France. He saw the civil war as a convenient sideshow, distracting the world while he advanced Germany's interests in Central Europe. And the war in Spain would be a convenient testing ground for his airforce.

It is said that the anti-Franco side had the best songs. But Franco's rebels had the advantage in equipment, an airforce, plus aircraft and pilots from Germany and Italy. Franco's forces included 24,000 of Spain's toughest troops - Spanish legionnaires and Moroccan regulars. The conservative and authoritarian regime in Portugal, led by Salazar, was sending arms to Franco's forces, while the Communist parties in the United States and elsewhere were organizing volunteers to fight on the side of the Popular Front government.

From Ireland more men went to fight on the side of Franco than joined the fight for the government. One of the few nations that gave assistance to Spain's Popular Front government was Mexico, Mexico sending 1000 guns and cartridges. The Soviet Union sent arms and a few planes - purchased by Spain's government - and these arrived in late October. The Soviet Union sent some food to Spain, and Stalin also sent advisors and some agents of his police, the NKVD. He still wanted friendship with anti-fascist democracies and did not want to alienate them by supporting revolution - which put him at odds with a few on the Left in Spain who were hoping to turn the civil war into a social revolution - and he was especially hostile toward Spain's Trotskyist revolutionaries in Spain. Stalin was interested in security for the Soviet Union. He was worried that his alliance with France would be weakened by France having a fascist Spain on one border and a fascist Germany on the other.

The United States remained neutral, as did Britain and the Popular Front government in France. Members of Britain's government looked with disdain upon the chaos that had accompanied the Popular Front coming to power in Spain, and to them the Popular Front appeared to be a stepping stone toward a Bolshevik style revolution. Franco, moreover, maintained good relations with the British government, assuring it that he would make no territorial agreements with Italy or Germany and that he would leave Britain secure in holding its navy base at Gibraltar. The British government believed that a regime under Franco would be more stable than one under Spain's Leftists.

Churchill agreed with his government's neutrality toward Spain, and he favored France remaining neutral, stating that if France sided with Spain's Popular Front it would be a godsend to the pro-Germans in France. The Popular Front government in France feared that if it gave more help to the government in Spain, the civil war there might spill into France. France supplying Spain's government with aircraft created a strong protest from the British government, and France refrained from any additional help to Spain's government.

On November 6, 1939, Franco's forces captured Madrid, forcing the government to flee to Valencia. Franco believed that a slow and thorough victory was the best means of ridding Spain of socialism, anarchism, communism, liberal democracy and Free Masonry. He hoped that those Leftists not killed in the war would be forced into exile and that enemies remaining in Spain after the war would be too traumatized and weak to offer opposition to his regime.

The forces under Franco committed atrocities, but so too did the forces fighting for the Popular Front. It is no longer disputed that by the end of 1936 between seven and ten thousand members of the Catholic clergy met violent deaths. This included hundreds of nuns and over a dozen bishops. [note]  Ernest Hemingway, who was sympathetic toward the government side in the war was, however, inspired to describe some of their atrocities in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Pope Pius XI was inspired to speak out not only against Spain's Popular Front government but also against what he described as the Bolshevism behind it, which he said "had already given proof of its will to subvert all orders, from Russia to China, from Mexico to South America."

The intensity of the leftists and anarchists, the burning of churches and killing of nuns and other acts inspired by passion and hate failed to produce the society intended. And with the power derived from military success, it as the turn of conservatives to act with ferocity. They took repraisals against those they had come to see as their enemies. Thousands of supporters of democracy and the Popular Front government were imprisoned, and according to conservative estimates between 10,000 and 28,000 were executed. Others have calculated these deaths at from 50,000 to 200,000 - what became known as the Fierce Slaughter (la Feroz Matanza).

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