Peter Anderson

With the help of the Italians, the Malaga area and province is seized in February 1937.

After this, the next front is really from March, April 1937.

Franco decides that he wants to take the Basque country.

The Republican side, the government side, suffers enormous shortages.

So there are often parts of the country that are cut off from their traditional supply base.

So Barcelona famously got milk from other parts of Spain that it's no longer able to get.

Shipping is hard to get, grain supplies and so on into the Republic.

So again, there are graphic descriptions of people who are eating just a few lentils and rice each day.

They're becoming more and more emaciated.

There are terrible queues for food.

There's a black market that's emerging.

One thing the Francoists famously do in October 1938 is they bomb Madrid with bread.

And their argument is, on the Franco side, we have supplies and we have food.

You're starving.

You should give up.

And if you give up, you're going to be well fed.

What the Republic's done by this stage is built up a pretty powerful army.

It's well supplied.

They catch Franco off guard by surprise, if you like.

They cross the River Ebro.