The ‘Red Terror’ and the Spanish Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War, the death and destruction on the fighting fronts was matched by murder and repression behind the lines. Claims and counter-claims about atrocities committed against social and political enemies, blurring distinctions between ‘civilians’ and ‘combatants’, were traded within Spain and internationally during the conflict itself and since. The victorious Francoists assiduously propagated the claim that the bloodthirsty ‘reds’ on the Republican side had presided over the annihilation of upwards of a million of their fellow citizens while playing down details of their own activities. Those who had died on the Nationalist side were commemorated as ‘martyrs’ to a just and noble cause, while Republicans were condemned as ‘criminals’ and ‘anti-Spaniards’ and largely left in unmarked graves. Since the fall of the dictatorship, and opening of access to archives, it become possible to undertake proper research into the repressions behind the lines. There is now a rough consensus that, during the war itself, there were approximately 50,000 deaths in Republican territories and double that number on the Nationalist side, with a further 50,000 executed by the Franco regime after the war had ended in 1939. Even so, this aspect of the Civil War remains one of the most difficult and contentious to study, touching upon many sensitive moral and political issues concerning the conflict which resonate down to the present day. In particular, comparative questions about the nature and character of the repressions on the two sides, their differences and similarities, remain a matter of considerable debate

Democracy · Dictatorship · Nationalism · Political repression · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Spanish History and Politics