Some are strongly tempted to consider that the Spanish Civil War could not have been avoided. This contravenes that informal yet important rule of history that nothing is inevitable, except perhaps in hindsight. On the other hand, it is very hard to imagine how any form of workable compromise could have been achieved after the failed left-wing revolution of October 1934. An increasingly militant left could not forgive the cruelty of the Civil Guard and the colonial troops, while the right became convinced that it had to pre-empt another attempt at violent revolution.
Other even more unanswerable questions remain important, if only because they can provoke us into seeing issues from an unaccustomed perspective. The ideals of liberty and democracy formed the basis of the Republic’s cause abroad. Yet the revolutionary reality on the ground, the impotence of the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, and the lack of respect for the rule of law on both sides, must be looked at carefully.
Republican propaganda during the civil war always emphasized that its government was the legally appointed one after the elections of February 1936. This is true, but one also has to pose an important question. If the coalition of the right had won those elections, would the left have accepted the legitimate result? One strongly suspects not. The socialist leader Largo Caballero threatened openly before the elections that if the right won, it would be open civil war.
The nationalists tried from the very beginning to pretend that they had risen in revolt purely to forestall a communist putsch. This was a complete fabrication to provide retrospective justification for their acts. But for the left to claim that the nationalists had launched an unprovoked attack against law-abiding democrats is disingenuous. The left had often shown as little respect for the democratic process and the rule of law as the right. Both sides, of course, justified their actions on the grounds that if they did not act first, their opponents would seize power and crush them. But this only goes to show that nothing destroys the centre ground more rapidly than the politics of fear and the rhetoric of threat.
Some argue that words cannot kill. But this becomes less and less convincing the more one looks at the cycle of mutual suspicion and hatred, all enflamed by irresponsible declamation. In fact, the right-wing leader Calvo Sotelo was assassinated because of his own deliberately provocative speeches in the Cortes. It is also important to consider whether the rhetoric of annihilation tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. General Queipo de Llano threatened in one of his notorious broadcasts from Seville that the nationalists would execute ten republicans for every one of their own men killed. This proved in the end to be not that far from the mark.
One must also not forget Largo Caballero’s declaration that he wanted a Republic without class warfare, but to achieve that a political class had to disappear. This was an obvious echo of Lenin’s openly stated intention to eliminate the bourgeoisie. But would a victory of the left in say 1937 or 1938 have led to a comparable scale of executions and imprisonment as under Franco? It is, of course, impossible to tell, and one cannot judge entirely by the Russian civil war, but it is still a question which must not be brushed aside. The winner in any civil war, as several historians have argued, is bound to kill more because of the cycle of fear and hate.
All these complex and interrelated issues show how it is impossible to separate cause and effect with scientific precision. Truth was indeed the first casualty of the Spanish Civil War. The subject has suffered from more intense debate and more polemics for longer after the event than any other modern conflict, including even the Second World War. The historian, although obviously unable to be completely dispassionate, should try to do little more than understand the feelings of both sides, to probe previous assumptions and to push forward the boundaries of knowledge. As far as is humanly possible, moral judgements should be left to the individual reader.
POLITICAL PARTIES, GROUPINGS AND ORGANIZATIONS
NATIONALISTS
MONARCHIST (ALFONSINE)
Acción Española
Renovación Española
The Alfonsine monarchists supported the descendants of Queen Isabella II, the daughter of Ferdinand VII, as opposed to those of his brother, Don Carlos. Thus the monarchists in the twentieth century were those who backed King Alfonso XIII and then his son, Don Juan, the Count of Barcelona and the father of the present King Juan Carlos. The monarchist faction was strong among conservative army officers and it saw itself as the natural leadership for ‘Old Spain’. Popular support was marginal.
CARLIST
Communión Tradicionalista
Requetés (the Carlist militia)
Pelayos (Carlist youth movement)
Margaritas (Carlist women’s service)
The Carlists supported the rival Borbón line of Don Carlos, and stood for the idea of a traditionalist ultra-Catholic monarchy as opposed to Alfonsine monarchism, which they felt had been corrupted by nineteenth-century liberalism. The leadership, particularly the Count of Rodezno, tended to be court-orientated, while the base of mainly Navarrese smallholders was populist.
FALANGE
Falange Española de las JONS
Flechas (Falangist youth movement)
Auxilio Social (Falangist women’s service)
The Falange was a small fascist-style party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933, which then merged in 1934 with the more proletarian JONS (Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista). There was tension between the ‘modern reactionaries’, who followed José Antonio and who believed in the nationalist ideals of Old Spain above everything else, and the socialist wing, which resented the way its anti-capitalist ideology was overridden by the upper class señoritos. The ‘leftist’ faction was even more disadvantaged by the vast influx of opportunists in 1936 and 1937. Its influence was crushed when Franco institutionalized the movement, amalgamating it with the Carlists.
Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET)
This amalgam of the nationalist political movements, principally the Falangists and the Carlists, was ordered by Franco in April 1937. He became its chief. The uniform of the movement combined the dark-blue shirt of the Falange and the red beret of the Carlists.
PRE-WAR RIGHT
Confederación Española de Derechas Autonomas (CEDA)
Acción Popular (AP)
Juventudes del Acción Popular (JAP)
Popular Action Youth
Partido Agrario (mainly Castilian landowners) CEDA, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right was a political alliance of right-wing Catholic parties, brought together under Gil Robles. It won the election of 1933, but its failure to win in February 1936 led to its rapid disintegration. JAP, its youth movement, went over to the Falange en masse during the spring of 1936.