The Spanish Civil War
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What events led to the Spanish Civil War in 1936?
It is the 24th of October 2019, in the mountains of central Spain. Late autumn sunlight shines down weakly on the Valley of the Fallen, a memorial to the Spanish Civil War perched high on a rocky crag. A monumental cross casts an elongated shadow over the white-walled buildings that make up the complex. In the cavernous interior of the crypt, hewn into the granite of the mountain itself, a tomb has been opened. Workmen strain to lift out an ornate coffin, as a group of black-clad mourners look on. Among them is a woman, her soft sobs echoing off the soaring stone walls, a descendant of the 20th century dictator General Francisco Franco. She is here because the Spanish government has ordered the removal of his body from this memorial, which was built using the forced labour of his victims.
Once the workmen have finished, several male relatives hoist the flag-draped coffin onto their shoulders and slowly carry it outside. The woman follows close behind, her high heels tapping on the polished marble floor. She emerges, blinking into the courtyard outside, where a smart white helicopter waits to receive the coffin. With the cargo loaded, the rotors start to turn. Shading her eyes with one gloved hand, the woman watches as it rises into the pale blue sky, bearing Franco to his new resting place. Meanwhile, in the northern Spanish province of Catalonia, an archaeologist kneels in a grave of a very different type. A team of volunteers have dug this large rectangular pit in the orange earth.
Now he bends over with a brush clutched tightly in one calloused hand, carefully scraping dirt away from what is slowly revealing itself to be a skull. One of his students hunkers down next to him and continues the painstaking work of clearing earth away from the ribcage of the skeleton. Gradually she brings the individual bones of the spinal column into view. A line of white plastic buttons is uncovered, and further down, the dull shine of what appears to be a belt buckle. The archaeologist returns to his own task, finally clearing enough earth away that the entire skull is visible. His knees protesting as he gets to his feet, he calls over one of their volunteers, a local woman who believes that her grandfather, a Union activist executed by Franco's forces during the Civil War, is buried here.
He asks her to bring the camera so that he can document these latest finds. Crouching down again, he takes detailed pictures of the skeleton they have just unearthed. So far they have discovered six victims here. This makes seven. The archaeologist puts the camera to one side and picks up his brush once again. He will not stop until every one of this grave's dark secrets has been brought into the light.
Nowadays, Spain is a popular tourist destination run by a democratically elected left-wing government. Yet the memory of its recent, blood-soaked past lingers. The story of Franco's rise to power and the painful, repressive regime he oversaw is fundamentally interlinked with that of the Spanish Civil War. a brutal three-year conflict that laid bare the ideological divisions of interwar Europe. It drew support from fascist governments across the continent and was a testing ground for many of the weapons and tactics later used to devastating effect during the Second World War. But it also inspired socialists from around the world to fight for the democratic republican government and to oppose the rising tide of fascism wherever and however they could.
So what caused Spain's military to turn against the country's civilian government in 1936? Why did a national civil war attract such international attention? And what ramifications does the conflict still have in modern Spain? I'm John Hopkins from the Noisa Podcast Network. This is a short history of the Spanish Civil War.
The opening decades of the 20th century are a turbulent period for Spain. In 1898, following a catastrophic military defeat at the hands of the United States, it loses its last remaining colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What events led to the Spanish Civil War in 1936?
0:02–7:42
2
How did Franco rise to power during the Spanish Civil War?
7:42–15:03
3
What role did international support play in the Spanish Civil War?
15:03–22:20
4
How did the Spanish Civil War impact civilian life?
22:20–28:49
5
What were the major battles and turning points of the Spanish Civil War?
28:49–35:22
6
How did the bombing of Guernica symbolize the war's brutality?
35:22–41:32
7
What were the consequences of the Spanish Civil War for Spain?
41:32–48:51