By April 1939, all of Spain was under fascist control and Franco declared a victory .Solidifying his power with a brutal dictatorship by oppressing and systematically killing any political opposition. Over half a million people were killed in the war, and in the next few years many tens of thousands more were executed, not forgetting all those who died from malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease.
Although the Republic fell and victory did not come to Spain, it influenced the knowledge and opinion of the British public, created thousands of new activists, drawing them into the anti-fascist struggle, and contributed massively to the long term defeat of fascism later on in 1945.
Perversely after the Second World War after both Hitler and Mussolini were defeated, Franco was allowed to continue his totalitarian role in Spain, and for years to come his brutal force held sway and continued to destroy lives, dissent was brutally suppressed with many thousands of voices silenced , and forced into exile.
General Franco's military regime remained in power until his death in 1975 depriving Spain of freedom for several decades afterwards, and former Republicans were subjected to various forms of discrimination and punishment. Victory for the Francoist side brought economic and political isolation for Spain until the 1950s and the denial of basic rights until the late 1970s. Only in recent years have relatives of the executed started to learn where their loved ones are buried.
Following the death of Franco on November 201975, a new democratic government replaced the old regime, and as a gesture of gratitude to the international volunteers who had come to Spain, sixty years after the outbreak of the war, the Spanish Government offered citizenship to the surviving members of the Brigades.
The legacy of the Spanish civil war still haunts the Spanish state, where democratic regression and repression of dissidence —especially in Catalonia— remain all too real.
While the spectre of fascism also still haunts and universal equality has sill not been achieved.
We should not forget the international brigades who preceded us, and we must continue to resist oppressive forces, with our shout of no pasaran.
The following are a selection of poems that emerged from this conflict. Powerful and still inspiring.
For the Fallen -W.B. KealBrave sons of liberty, fallen in battle,
Fallen that we, their successors, might live,
Bravely they faced the machine-gunner's rattle,
Giving so bravely all they'd to give.
Hurriedly, carelessly, rudely, we buried them,
Buried them quickly, beneath the brown soil.
Hurriedly, quickly, we gave them our blessing,
Then we returned to our heart-breaking toil.
Theirs was no splendour, the fallen in action;
Theirs was no pomp, neither glory nor show,
They were the cream of the Communist fraction
We are the reapers, but they went to sow.
Shall we forget them who never forget us,
Defending the workers, while fighting in Spain?
Shall we stay passive while Fascism threatens us?
Shall their great effort be made all in vain?
Never forget them, the lessons they taught us,
Think of their travail, their suffering, pain!
Raise the Red Standard and help support us,
Lest we see in England what happened in Spain.
To the Mothers of the Dead Militia - Pablo NerudaThey have not died!
they stand upright in the midst of the gunpowder,
they live, burning as brands there.
In the copper-coloured prairie
their pure shadows have come together
like a curtain of armoured wind,
a barrier colour of fury
like that same invisible beast of sky.
Mothers, they are standing amidst the corn
as tall as the profundity of noon
that possesses the giant plains.
They area peal of sombre voices
calling for victory through the shapes of murdered steel.
Sisters as close as
the dust fallen,
hearts that have been broken
keep faith in your dead -
they are not roots only
beneath stones dyed in blood,
not only poor fallen bones
at work now in the finality of earth,
for their mouths are shaping the dry powder ready for action,
they attack in waves of iron,
in their clenched fists lies death's own contradiction.
See, from so many bodies an invincible life rises!
mothers, sons, banners,
in one single being as living as life;
one face made of all the slain eyes is guard in the darkness
with a sword that is strengthened and tempered with human
hope.
Cast aside your mourning veils, join all of your tears
tillt hey transmute into metal-
so that we may strike day and night,
so that we may hammer day and night,
so that we may spit both day and night,
till the portals of hatred be overthrown.
I have not forgotten your tragedies
and your sons, they are known to me,
and if I have pride in their deaths
in their lives, too, I have pride.
Their smiles
are like flashes in the murk of the workshops,
and in the underground
every day their feet ring by mine.
I have seen
amongst the oranges of Levante
and the fishing-nets of the south,
in the ink of the printshops
and the masonry of the buildings,
I have seen
the flame of their hearts fashioned out of fire and valour.
And, as in your hearts, mothers,
in mine there is so much of death and mourning
that it seems like a forest flooded
with the blood that quenched their smiles;
to it come the furious snows of sleeplessness,
the wrenching solitude of the days.
But beyond your curse on the hyenas
out of Africa, blood-parched, baying their foul cries,
beyond wrath and contempt, beyond tears,
Others, trans pierced by anguish and death,
look into the heart of the new day that is dawning
and know that your dead smile up at you from the earth,
raising their clenched fists above the corn, there, look, they are
standing!
Translated from the Spanish by Nancy Cunard. T.E. Nicholas - In Remembrance of a Son of Wales ( Who Fell in Spain)Amid the roar of guns that split the air,
Faint moaning reached him from a tortured field;
He followed to a city passing fair,
His soul aflame, his flesh a living shield.
There death-charged missiles blazed a trail of woe,
Leaving each shattered hearth a vain defence
While flocks of iron eagles, swooping low,
Clawed out the life of cradled innocence.
Far from the hills he loved, he faced the night,
Bearing, for freedom's sake, an alien yoke;
He fell exalting brotherhood and right,
His bleeding visage scorched by fire and smoke;
E'en as the sweetest note is born of pain,
So shall the song of songs be born in Spain.
Guernica - A.S KnowlandIrun-Badajoz-Malaga-and then GuernicaSo that the swastika and the eagle
might spring from the blood-red soil,
bombs were sown into the earth at Geurnica,
whose only harvest was a calculated slaughter,
Lest freedom should wave between the grasses
and the corn its proud emblem, or love
be allowed to tread its native fields,
Fascism was sent to destroy the innocent,
and, goose-stepping to the exaggerated waving
of the two-faced flag, to save Spain.
But though the soil be saturated with blood
as a very efficient fertilzer, the furrow
of the ghastly Fasces shall remain barren.
The planted swastika, he eagle grafted
on natural stock shall wither and remain sere;
for no uniformed force shall marshall the sap
thrilling to thrust buds into blossoms, or quicken
the dead ends of the blighted branches;
but the soli shall be set against an alien crop
and the seed be blasted in the planting
But strength lies in the strength of the roots.They shall not pass to ruin Spain!LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION - Gonzalez TunonThe bullfighters are monarchists,
The monks are preachers of fascism.
And the miners of the Asturias?
Long live the revolution!
My grandfather came from Mieres;
His wife from Pola de Siero.
The capital city of my blood
Must surely be called Oviedo!
The Moors are outside Oviedo.
Oviedo they'll never take
Though they'll kill all the Spaniards and threaten
Their wives with murder and rape!
The Regulars are bathing
In the Covadonga flood.
The lords swim at Majorca,
While the miners swim in blood.
In October there are no fiestas
Except those of the season.
But October only means to us
'LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!'
translated from the Spanish by A.L. LloydThe Hero- Richard ChurchI could tell you of a young man
Blown with heroism into Spain.
He had a knapsack of philosophy,
And as he went he scattered the small grain
Of his few songs under the dangerous sky.
A girl, grown fond, thought him too young to die.
She put the memory of their secret joy
Behind her heart, and turned to public deeds,
Neglecting the earth he trod, and his scattered seeds.
But soon she was brought to child-bed, with a boy
Smiling up at her as his father had smiled.
And thankfully she saw that his plump back
Carried no philosophic haversack.
She saw, but only for his mother's breast
That being so, she found she could forgive
The man who died so that a dream might live,
And faith with prudence remain unreconciled.
POEMS REPRINTED FROMEXCELLENT ANTHOLOGY :-The penguin Book ofSpanish Civil War VerseEdited by Valentine Cunningham1980( their are so many lovely poems in this collection,
essential reading for anyone interested in this period)
There have been many , many books written on the Spanish Civil War, here are some I would strongly
recommend for further perusal.