Civil War of España

As the third phase of our trip, for the past week the family has been staying in Barcelona, Spain, with friends of ours, the Casarez family. The first full day we were here, we went on a Spanish civil war themed tour of the city. Our guide knew lots about the war, and had many original artifacts from the time, such as pamphlets, magazines, buttons, and rifle casings. In our guide’s words it was a “walking museum.” The civil war eventually resulted in the victory of Franco and the fascists, and his regime lasted for many more decades. When we started the tour that was about the extent of my knowledge on the subject. By the end, I had learned so much, which I am excited to share with you! One warning, though, the Spanish Civil War is extremely complicated and had many factions competing for dominance and fighting each other, and I am still a novice student of the time period.

The Spanish Civil War started in 1936, although it was pretty well known that a coup was coming for months beforehand. It was started by four generals, but the only one who survived to the end of the war was Franco. Two of them died in plane crashes (sound familiar?) and the other one died by firing squad after failing to take Barcelona. It isn’t believed that the first two’s deaths were assassinations. The biggest problem the fascists faced at the start of the war was that most of their hardened army was in Morocco, where they had been fighting a variety of colonial wars before defecting to the coup. Fortunately for Franco, Hitler and Mussolini helped by providing the largest airlift of the time to bring tens of thousands of troops back to Spain to fight. They also helped later by sending men and weapons in huge numbers. The western democracies helped the Republic side slightly by sending a few thousand men and some weapons, but most of the foreign aid the Republic received was from the Soviets, who sent tens of thousands of men, and a few hundred of arguably the best tanks of the day. Unfortunately the Republic army did not really know how to use this equipment, and the Soviet army sent did not do well in the heat, which eventually resulted in a fascist victory.

The Spanish civil war was more complicated than many other famous civil wars, and in Barcelona it was especially convoluted. In most cities in Spain there was one strong faction, but in Barcelona there were four. Two were for the current Republic, while the other two wanted a revolution for a new kind of government, although their ideas on that government were quite different. The two pro Republic groups were very strange bedfellows at first glance, the Stalinist Communist’s, and the Republic government itself. It may be a bit strange for the Soviets to be in favor of a republic, but Stalin was worried that western democracies were becoming too aggressive against him, so he told his supporters in foreign countries to “turn it down”. The two pro revolution groups were the Anarchist Workers Union, and the Anti Soviet Socialists, and they were even less friendly to each other than the first two groups. However, all of them were against the fascists, who had many factions themselves and eventually took control of the military and tried to take over. The fascists first attempt to take Barcelona was repelled by the four factions, and the Workers Union eventually took control of Barcelona until the fascists took the city for good in 1939.

The Spanish civil war had many consequences in the world. It allowed Germany to test its rebuilt army and air force, and so depleted Italy’s reserves that it is thought of as the main reason why Italy was so weak in WW2. In World War Two, Spain remained officially neutral, but sent thousands of men to fight for the Nazi’s. Franco eventually died in the 1970’s, and today Spain is a republic once more, but the road there was long and bloody. As I previously mentioned our guide had many artifacts, but the one that most illustrates my point is the most simple one. After the civil war everything became harder to get, including pencils for schools, so children would use rifle shells to use every last bit of the pencil, because the casings were so easy to find. It is hard to imagine a world like that today, but that is the consequence of war.