Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, a moment in time that has come to represent the defining struggle of the age: a clash between not just between the opposing political ideologies of socialism and fascism, but between civilization and barbarism, good and evil. The fascists launched a coup against the democratically elected Popular Front Government in Madrid on the night of 17th July 1936 inspired mostly by General Franco. A central goal of the rebels was the destruction of left-wing organisations. Franco’s fellow officer, General Queipo de Llano, instructed his subordinates on how to treat the ‘Bolshevik’ activist with this chilling sentence: ‘I authorise you to kill him like a dog and you will be free of all responsibility." The Nationalist rebels' initial efforts to instigate military revolts throughout Spain only partially succeeded. In rural areas with a strong right-wing political presence, Franco's confederates generally won out. They quickly seized political power and instituted martial law. In other areas, particularly cities with strong leftist political traditions, the revolts met with stiff opposition and were often quelled. Some Spanish officers remained loyal to the Republic and refused to join the uprising.
Within days of the uprising, both the Republic and the Nationalists called for foreign military aid. Initially, France pledged to support the Spanish Republic, but soon reneged on its offer to pursue an official policy of non-intervention in the civil war. Great Britain immediately rejected the Republic's call for support.
Faced with potential defeat, Franco called upon Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for aid. Thanks to their military assistance, he was able to airlift troops from Spanish Morocco across to the mainland to continue his assault on Madrid. Throughout the three years of the conflict, Hitler and Mussolini provided the Spanish Nationalist Army with crucial military support.
Some 5,000 German air force personnel served in the Condor Legion, which provided air support for coordinated ground attacks against Republican positions and carried out aerial bombings on Republican cities. The most notorious of these attacks came on April 26, 1937, when German and Italian aircraft leveled the Basque town of Gernike (Guernica in Spanish) in a three-hour campaign that killed 200 civilians or more. Fascist Italy supplied some 75,000 troops in addition to its pilots and planes. Spain became a military laboratory to test the latest weaponry under battlefield conditions.
The Spanish conflict quickly generated worldwide fears that it could explode into a full-fledged European war. In August 1936, more than two dozen nations, including France, Great Britain, Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, signed a Non-Intervention Agreement on Spain. The latter three signatories openly violated the policy. Italy and Germany continued to supply Franco's forces, while the Soviet Union provided military advisors, tanks, aircraft, and other war materiel to the Republic
But the people rose, millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; and more than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help defend the Spanish Republic, forces of red and black fought back united against fascism. In the countryside, peasants took control of the land, redistributing large estates and, in many places, collectivizing the land and setting up communes and a civil war was was waged, the workers immediately set up barricades and within hours the rising had been defeated. Arms were seized and given to workers who were dispatched to other areas to prevent risings. Madrid was also saved because of the heroism and initiative of the workers. Hearing of what had happened in Barcelona they had stormed the main army base in the city. Workers' militias were established. Workplaces were taken over and for ten months after July 1936, the people held power. Taking over the factories and the running of the whole of society. They organised workers’ committees in enterprises and streets. They believed that they had power and fought to defend and extend it.
But in a series of tragic events were sadly defeated aided by the British government who had agreed to a policy of 'non-intervention' along with the help of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
The town of Guernica situated 30 kilometers east of Bilbao, in the Basque province of Vizcaya. Guernica was considered to be the spiritual capital of the Basque people and had a population of about 7,000 people. On 26th April 1937, Guernica was bombed by the Germab Condor Legion.. As it was a market day the town was crowded. The town was first struck by explosive bombs and then by incendiaries. As people fled from their homes they were machine-gunned by fighter planes. The three hour raid completely destroyed the town. It is estimated that 1,685 people were killed and 900 injured in the attack.
The Spanish church backed this story and its professor of theology in Rome went so far as to declare that "the truth is there is not a single German in Spain. Franco only needs Spanish soldiers which are second to none in the world." After the war a telegram sent from Franco's headquarters was discovered and revealed that he had asked the German Condor legion to carry out the attack on Guernica. It is believed that the attack was an attempt to demoralize the Basque people. Germany had agreed as they wanted to carry out "a major experiment in the effects of aerial terrorism."An earlier post on this tragic event can be found here https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/04/79-years-ago-bombing-of-guernica.html
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. 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.
The fighting and persecution resulted in several million Spaniards being displaced. Many fled areas of violence for safe refuge elsewhere. Only a few countries, such as Mexico and the Dominican Republic, opened their doors to Spanish refugees. Nearly 4,000 Basque children arrived in the UK in 1937, fleeing from the terrors of the Spanish Civil War. Over 200 were accommodated at colonies in Caerleon, Swansea, Brechfa and Old Colwyn, and they were warmly welcomed by Welsh people who considered that Welsh miners and the Basques were fighting the same enemy - fascism.
When the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, with Franco's victory, some 500,000 Spanish Republicans escaped to France, where many were placed in internment camps in the south, such as Gurs, St. Cyprien, and Les Milles. Following the German defeat of France in spring 1940, Nazi authorities conscripted Spanish Republicans for forced labor and deported more than 30,000 to Germany, where about half of them ended up in concentration camps/ Some 7,000 of these became prisoners in Mathausen; more than half of them died in the camp.
About 300 people volunteered from Wales against the tyranny of fascism, with 35 of whom not returning home .When the Welsh volunteers returned home they were greeted in their communities as heroes, but many felt betrayed by the British government and were at first unwilling to share their experiences.However, as time went on, plaques were erected, memoirs and biographies were written and historians began to carefully curate the individual stories of idealism and bravery
The important historical truth is the international flavour of those who volunteered to fight in this brutal war.A total of 59,380 volunteers from fifty-five countries served during the Spanish Civil War joining.the International Brigade, to fight selflessly side by side for the ideas of liberty and social justice, solidarity and mutual aid .Rallying to the republican cause.The International Brigade, were so called because their members (initially) came from so many different countries. The International Brigaders were recruited, organized, and directed by the Cominterm (Communist International), with headquarters in Paris. A large number of the mostly young recruits were Communists before they became involved in the conflict; more joined the party during the course of the war. This included the following: French (10,000), German (5,000), Polish (5,000), Italian (3,350), American (2,800), British (2,000), Yugoslavian (1,500), Czech (1,500), Canadian (1,000), Hungarian (1,000) and Scandinavian (1,000). Battalions established included the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, British Battalion, Connolly Column and the George Washington Battalion among others.
For many it was not just a war to defeat the fascists it was the beginning of a new society. A revolution in fact, unfortunately revolutions do not succeed when the people are divided. There are many lessons to be learnt from this struggle, a struggle that continues to do this day.
Lets not forget all those who were killed serving with the International Brigades who nobly fought bravely in a spirit of solidarity, and political and moral awareness to try and save us from fascism's threat that still sadly lingers and haunts us today.The dark shadow cast by the Spanish Civil war, still matters, and the wound inflicted on Spain still within living memory for many has yet to close. We must continue to resist oppressive forces, with our shout of no pasaran.
The poet and political activist John Corford was just 21 years old when
he died in Spain in August 1936, I will leave you with these two poems
by him written in the teeth of death.
Poem
Poem
Heart of the heartless world,
Dear heart, the thought of you
Is the pain at my side,
The shadow that chills my view.
The wind rises in the evening,
Reminds that autumn is near.
I am afraid to lose you,
I am afraid of my fear.
On the last mile to Huesca,
The last fence for our pride,
Think so kindly, dear, that I
Sense you at my side.
And if bad luck should lay my strength
Into the shallow grave,
Remember all the good you can;
Don’t forget my love.
A letter from Aragon
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
We buried Ruiz in a new pine coffin,
But the shroud was too small and his washed feet stuck out.
The stink of his corpse came through the clean pine boards
And some of the bearers wrapped handkerchiefs round their faces.
Death was not dignified.
We hacked a ragged grave in the unfriendly earth
And fired a ragged volley over the grave.
You could tell from our listlessness, no one much missed him.
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
There is no poison gas and no H. E.
But when they shelled the other end of the village
And the streets were choked with dust
Women came screaming out of the crumbling houses,
Clutched under one arm the naked rump of an infant.
I thought: how ugly fear is.
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
Our nerves are steady; we all sleep soundly.
In the clean hospital bed, my eyes were so heavy
Sleep easily blotted out one ugly picture,
A wounded militiaman moaning on a stretcher,
Now out of danger, but still crying for water,
Strong against death, but unprepared for such pain.
This on a quiet front.
But when I shook hands to leave, an Anarchist worker
Said: 'Tell the workers of England
This was a war not of our own making
We did not seek it.
But if ever the Fascists again rule Barcelona
It will be as a heap of ruins with us workers beneath it.'
reprinted from Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse, edited by Valentine Cunningham (Penguin, 1980)
Two further posts related to the Spanish Civil War can be found here :-
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/02/remembering-fight-against-fascism-in.html
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/05/anniversary-of-bombing-of-alicante-in.html
Further Reading ;-
Vernon Richards - Lessons of the Spanish Civil War, Freedom Press
The Spanish Civil War- Hugh Thomas , Penguin
The Spanish Civil War - Antony Beevor, Cassel
Miners Against Fascism, Wales and the Spanish Civil War - Hywel Francis, Lawrence and Wishart
Fleeing Franco- Hywel Francic, University of Wales Press
And here is a link to the International Brigades Memorial Trust :-
http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/
