Chapter 1: 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.
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Chapter 2: How did Franco rise to power during the Spanish Civil War?
It becomes very brutalized. And they develop a culture that celebrates death. And they saw that in fighting this kind of colonial war in Africa, They were making Spain great again. They were redeeming Spain. This is very much a kind of pre-fascist outlook, thinking that you can save Spain through the blood sacrifice against this external enemy.
While the army may gaze with nostalgia at Spain's imperial past, for civilians, the country is nominally a democracy. But the system artificially ensures that the conservative and liberal parties take turns forming governments, with votes manipulated by local bosses and power ultimately resting with the king.
known as the restoration system that had come about in the 1870s the problem was that despite being formally a democracy it was based on corruption and exclusion so a lot of people in spain really couldn't influence the political situation particularly people who maybe worked in the countryside as landless laborers or people who worked in cities and factory jobs and so on
In 1923, amid a wave of strike action, a bloodless military coup brings a new government to power. But though the new dictator, General Primo de Rivera, shares the conservative religious values of groups like the landholding peasants, his regime continues to exclude large numbers of Spanish citizens from the political system.
Supported by the king, Alfonso XIII, the coup hardens conservative attempts to stem the tide of change in Spain. But progress cannot be held off forever. In 1930, Primo de Rivera's rule comes to an end after his minor attempts at military reform lose him the support of the army.
The king, compromised by his association with the dictator, desperately tries to revive the pre-1923 political system of alternating power. But when municipal elections are held, Republican parties secure a convincing win, and King Alfonso goes into exile. Since there had been a short-lived republic declared in the 1870s, this new one is now declared as the Second Republic.
It's against the monarchy, but it's also an attempt to overcome some of the problems that Spain had faced through political exclusion. And they were really about the army. So there were lots of people who wanted to reform the Spanish army, reduce the number of officers, curtail its activities in Morocco. Land redistribution was a big issue.
empower workers more to improve their wages, carry out reforms to the church. It's about creating a proper democracy. It's about tackling the reforms that have been needed in Spain for many years. And it's about challenging the power of really important groups like members of the army, members of the church, and members of capitalist industrial groups, if you like.
This reformist government does not last long. In the elections of 1933, the first in which Spanish women are able to vote, a conservative government is voted in, and the nascent reforms are immediately quashed. Widespread strikes follow, as well as armed rebellion in the northern region of Asturias. The military is sent in, led at this time by a general named Francisco Franco.
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Chapter 3: What role did international support play in the Spanish Civil War?
The coup begins on the 17th of July 1936, when the colonial army based in Morocco rebels against the republican government. By the next day, garrisons across mainland Spain are in revolt. Soldiers quickly take control of the conservative-leaning areas, whose populations largely accept the idea of the military replacing the progressive left-wing government.
Looking to a pattern set by past coups, the generals masterminding the rebellion hope that the entire country can quickly be taken over.
Spain does have an interesting history of military intervention in politics. And in the 19th century, the way that worked was generals would make a declaration saying they no longer supported one prime minister and they were going to replace them either with themselves or with somebody else. And that more or less happened unopposed.
But by 1936, Spanish society has changed and the military can no longer act with this kind of impunity.
Over the early 20th century, Spaniards have been joining political parties, trade unions, organizations. They're becoming mobilized. When the army and its civilian supporters rebelled against the elected government of the Second Republic in July 1936, they were opposed by people in trade unions, by people in political parties.
who went to military barracks and took arms and weapons and fought with the troops in the streets across Spain. So what we've got in 1936 is a position of mass mobilization.
By the 19th of July, when Franco joins his troops in Morocco, it is clear that there will be no immediate victory for the military. Too many citizens are willing to resist, meaning that traditionally more left-leaning places like Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia and Madrid remain in government hands. As the coup stalls on the mainland, Franco and his troops are stranded in Morocco.
The navy is still loyal to the republican government and blockades the Straits of Gibraltar, the narrow waterway between Africa and the southern Spanish coast. So Franco, in dire need of assistance, looks to the fascist regimes already in power elsewhere.
If you were to lay a bet at this point, so on the 19th of July, 20th of July 1936, you might say the Republic, the government, the democratically elected popular front government of the Second Republic, is going to win. The crucial reason why that didn't happen, why the Republic didn't win, and why a botched coup turned into a civil war, is that Germany and Italy decide to intervene.
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Chapter 4: How did the Spanish Civil War impact civilian life?
The British government have a variety of reasons for promoting a policy of non-intervention. One is their ideological distaste for the Second Republic and the belief that the left-wing government is merely a prelude to the kind of communist revolution seen in Russia in 1917.
Another is their fear of open war with Nazi Germany and the worry that the conflict will spill outside of the borders of Spain. In 1936, their policy is still to appease the fascist dictators rising across Europe. The lack of international aid, along with the loss of their army to the coup, leaves the Republicans in an increasingly precarious position.
The militias upon which they're relying to halt the Francoist march on Madrid are made up of a variety of volunteers, trade unions, socialist and communist political groups, and even some foreigners. Women too begin volunteering to serve in these militias, fighting and dying alongside their male compatriots on the front line.
Mika Feldman, an Argentinian anarchist and Marxist living in Europe, is one such volunteer, opting to fight for a communist organization alongside her husband. The couple become involved in the Siege of Seguenta, one of the towns the Francoists need to take if they are to reach Madrid. In August 1936, Mika's husband is killed in action, but her war is only just beginning.
Taking up his pistol, she is elected head of her fighting division, a role she wastes no time in embracing. October 1936. In the historic town of Siguenza, in the heart of Spain, the last feeble rays of light linger on the horizon.
Inside the town's monumental Gothic cathedral, Mika Feldman, a dark-haired Republican fighter, flinches as the boom of cannon fire sounds outside the building's west wall. A few seconds later, she stumbles as the floor beneath her shakes with the impact. As she regains her feet, her stomach clenches painfully.
Along with a group of her fellow soldiers, she's been trapped in the cathedral for the past four days. Their supplies have been exhausted. Suddenly, a huge chunk of stonework falls from the ceiling at the far end of the aisle, smashing heavily onto the tiled floor. Horrified, Mika watches as a man screams and dives out of the way.
She throws up a hand to shield her face as a cannonball tears through a nearby stained glass window, filling the air with glittering fragments. Coughing now as plaster dust falls from the ceiling, Mika peers cautiously up at the damage. The walls surely cannot withstand much more. Taking a deep breath, she continues her walk around of the cathedral's interior.
The scene before her is more reminiscent of a morgue than a church, thick with the scent of rotten flesh. Bodies lie in the aisle, gazing sightlessly at the intricate vaulted ceiling above. Among them, her wounded comrades lie in the pews, groaning softly. Now Mika heads towards the altar, where the surviving militia members are clustered. After a quick discussion, a decision is reached.
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Chapter 5: What were the major battles and turning points of the Spanish Civil War?
And she's not the only one. Because once Franco's forces reach Madrid and fighting begins in earnest in November 1936, the city becomes a symbol of the international struggle against right-wing authoritarianism.
So it's very different to march up through rural areas of Spain in open land and to try and take a city. So Madrid is besieged. There's fighting on the main street that goes into the center of Madrid there. So Madrid is almost taken, but it's not taken.
So Madrid became the symbol for groups on the left and center of politics, both in Spain and internationally, as the place where fascism was being stopped. at a time when fascism seems to be advancing all across the world. Madrid, famously, the famous slogan from Madrid was, Madrid will be the tomb of fascism.
The capital acts as a beacon for those with left-wing sympathies. Those coming to its defense include the American writer Ernest Hemingway, who heads to Spain to report on the conflict. Others, like the English novelist George Orwell, volunteer as soldiers.
These foreign fighters, over 35,000 of whom arrive in Spain over the course of the war, are formed into what are known as the International Brigades.
Over the summer of 1936, the Spanish Civil War becomes the conflict of the moment. People are following the conflict from around the world. Lots of people are wanting to volunteer. In September 1936, the Soviet Union, under Stalin, decides that the British and the French are not doing anything to defend democracy.
It doesn't want to become directly involved in terms of sending large numbers of soldiers, or it does send lots of advisers and pilots and tanks. But maybe one of its more decisive decisions was to back international brigades. So they were going to take volunteers from around the world and channel them towards Spain.
And while not everyone who fights in these brigades is a communist, what unites them is their anti-fascist ideology.
I think the international brigades are really important in terms of telling us the strength of feeling that people had at the time against fascism, that they were prepared to give up their civilian lives and their safety.
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Chapter 6: How did the bombing of Guernica symbolize the war's brutality?
A building at the end of the street has collapsed, sending a shower of sparks in all directions. He retraces his steps and tries another road, but is waved back by a team of firemen. Even they cannot get into the town center, they tell him. It is an inferno. Defeated, George retreats to where the cars are parked, takes out his notebook, and begins to record what he has seen.
The world must know of the horror that has been inflicted on Guernica. To this day, the number of people killed during the bombing of Guernica remains unknown. Republican estimates from the time suggest that more than 1,500 civilians perish, though modern historians consider the true figure to be lower. But it is far from a purely Francoist attack.
The planes used are exclusively German and Italian, with the Luftwaffe masterminding the whole assault. Dropping high explosives to destroy roofs and buildings before unleashing incendiary devices to create a firestorm, they then strafe fleeing civilians with gunfire, the whole operation acting as a dress rehearsal for similar atrocities in World War II.
George Stier's eyewitness account of the aftermath is carried by news outlets across the world. This almost unprecedented aerial attack on a civilian population provokes outrage and inspires Pablo Picasso's famous mural depicting the carnage. The bombing crushes the ability of defenders within the town to resist the Francoist advance, and it falls at the end of April.
By the end of June, Franco is in control of the entire Basque region. As the center of Spain's heavy industry, its loss represents an immense blow to the Republican war effort. Though they chalk up some victories in the summer of 1937, in October Asturias, the nation's coal mining region, is conquered by Franco as well.
By now the Francoists have managed to block or impede access to all of Spain's Mediterranean ports with the help of their fascist allies. The provision of supplies and arms to the Republicans, the latter mostly acquired through intermediaries to get around the non-intervention treaty, is now a severe logistical challenge.
With government-controlled territories bursting with refugees, sourcing enough food becomes critical.
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.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of the Spanish Civil War for Spain?
With no equivalent support, the Republican army cannot prevail. This is driven home in September, when elsewhere in Europe the Munich Agreement is signed between France, Britain, Italy, and Germany. The treaty permits the German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, giving tacit British and French support to Hitler's expansionist agenda.
Demonstrating their commitment to their policy of appeasement, the move puts to bed any remaining hopes that these nations could help the Spanish Republicans to resist fascism. As the Nazis move ever closer to executing plans to expand across Northern Europe, back down in Spain, February 1939 sees the fall of Catalonia and with it Barcelona.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees stream across the border into France, bombed by Franco's forces as they go. Many who make it end up in French internment camps. Once France is occupied by the Germans, a number of survivors are shipped to Nazi concentration camps, while great numbers of those who do return to Spain are killed by the Franco government.
By spring 1939, the destruction of the Second Spanish Republic is all but complete. After Catalonia is lost, the remaining Republican leadership in Madrid is riven with indecision. Some want to attempt to negotiate with Franco, though he has rebuffed all such efforts so far. Others advocate for a full surrender. Still more want to continue fighting.
There is an attempted internal coup, triggering a brief civil war within the civil war, with supporters of different Republican factions fighting in the streets. Ultimately though, all it achieves is a hastening of the collapse. And in late March 1939, with Franco's forces encircling the city, the commanding officers in Madrid surrender.
It's a famous report by a newspaper correspondent who's following the Franco forces. And he simply goes to the metro station, buys a ticket, and travels into central Madrid unopposed, if you like, because everything's kind of melted away at that point. And that's the point that Franco, when he takes Madrid late March 1939,
He says, the Civil War is won, the Republican forces have been disarmed, and this is going to be the start of the Franco dictatorship.
Though estimates for the death toll vary widely, it is thought that up to half a million people have lost their lives in the three years of the conflict. The regime to which Franco will now subject his country is authoritarian and cruel, especially in its early years.
Regional identities and languages such as those in Catalonia and the Basque region are repressed, as are trade unions and opposition political parties. The Catholic Church once again becomes the state religion. Divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality are forbidden. Women are expected to serve six months in the women's section of the state party to prepare for motherhood.
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